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Why does the circular economy matter to IT? HPE's Technology Renewal Center re-visited · Technology Now

• 0:09
  Aubrey L: Hey, everyone, and welcome back to Technology Now, a weekly show from Hewlett Packard Enterprise where we take what's happening in the world and explore how it's changing the way organizations are using technology. We're your hosts, Aubrey Lovell.
• 0:23
  Michael B: And Michael Bird. In this episode, I'm back warm and snug in the office after a long trip to a rather chilly and wet Glasgow to visit HPE's Technology Renewal Centre in the last episode. Now this week, we'll be revisiting our interview with Ray McGann, managing director of HPE Financial Services Ireland and Worldwide Enterprise IT Asset Lifecycle Leader. We'll be delving deeper into the topics we discussed last week to find out more about reusing and recycling our old IT tech, the circular economy and how it's part of many firms' long term strategies to reduce e waste.
• 0:58
  Aubrey L: So if you're the kind of person who needs to know why what's going on in the world matters to your organization, then you already know that this podcast is for you. Yes. And if you haven't yet, then you better subscribe to that podcast app so you don't miss out. Alright. Michael, let's get into it.
• 1:15
  Michael B: Yep. Let's do it.
• 1:19
  Aubrey L: So to set us up, here's a few stats. According to 2023 figures from the World Economic Forum, around 53,600,000 metric tons of e waste is produced every year worldwide. 83% of that is not being collected, meaning there's a huge missed opportunity for the circular economy. HPE's Technology Renewal Centre or TRC at Erskine, just outside Glasgow in Scotland, is ahead of the curve though. It takes in around 3,000,000 pieces of unwanted IT equipment every year.
• 1:51
  In weight terms, that's approximately 35,000,000 pounds or 15,875 metric tons. For context, the TRC says that's as much as over 370 midsize jet airliners. Over 90% of that is refurbished and sent for reuse with much of what's left recycled where possible.
• 2:12
  Michael B: And that is brilliant and a great start to solving a massive global problem. But what exactly is the circular economy, and why is reusing old IT an economically good move? Well, that's just a few of the questions I asked Ray McGann last week whilst he was showing me around. So how does technology end up here? Is it donated, ex rental?
• 2:35
  Ray McGann: So, as you know, HPE FS is the leasing arm of HPE Group. And invariably, right across the European business area, we have a significant footprint of leased equipment. So when a customer comes to the end of their lease, invariably they have two or three choices. One is to extend the lease because they want to keep the equipment more. In some cases, customers want to keep the equipment, so they buy it from HPE Financial Services.
• 3:03
  And the third option is where they no longer require the asset and send it back. So that's one of the big inflows in the facility here. The other one is really what we call asset upcycling. And that's basically where customers own the equipment and they no longer want those assets and they send them back to us through an asset upcycling agreement.
• 3:24
  Michael B: And this equipment isn't, know, it's not all being recycled, it's going to be sold back to other Yeah.
• 3:30
  Ray McGann: The level of reintroduction into the market is significant. So in terms of our facility here in Erskine and our sister facility in North America in Andover, Massachusetts, we have processed in the last three years over 9,000,000 assets. It's a significant component of HPE's strategy to be part and parcel of sustainability and how we help customers manage their IT infrastructure on a sustainable basis. From a client side or the laptop, desktop, notebook, we're looking in the mid-90s, going back to reuse into a new owner. From a server technology, we're again early 90s.
• 4:13
  Overall, when you add in storage, networking devices, the overall average is about 80, in the mid-80s. So it's a huge reintroduction of product back into the marketplace.
• 4:25
  Michael B: My goodness. And so what is happening to all this equipment? Is it staying here long term?
• 4:31
  Ray McGann: Yes. So some of these assets facilitate very quick turnaround. There'd be components, memory, hard drives. Some of them are desktop notebooks. But then you have some older equipment.
• 4:42
  We've just walked through some cabinets. Some of those are from legacy systems that go back upwards of twenty five years. And clearly, certain customers' perspective, they're running significant applications or ERP systems that inherently are extremely valuable. So for those types of customers, the important thing is the underlying software programs or the ERP systems, and they want to maintain the original hardware as much as possible. So we invariably get asked, Have we got x aged profile asset?
• 5:21
  Whether that's going back into the older, earlier superdomes or the Alpha equipment. And the answer invariably is yes, we have it. Even if we don't have it in either of the two facilities, we do trade in the open market on a very frequent, almost daily basis. So at any one time, when we get asked by customers to fulfill a particular need, we either have it or we know where we can
• 5:45
  Michael B: Yeah. Get Wow. That So if some of the stuff is being recycled, how much ends up in landfill?
• 5:53
  Ray McGann: Our objective is that nothing that we would manage from our facility here or the facility in Andover in The US would end up in landfill. It's a very important part of it. And that's why I mentioned this is a controlled recycling program and a controlled reuse program. What we have behind us here is what we would describe as nonfunctional, unreliable and will not have a second life in the open market. So all of these assets here will be sent to recycling.
• 6:26
  And we have an annual license with the Scottish EPA in terms of what quantities of assets we are allowed to ship both into The UK and then out of The UK into Europe. So it's a very controlled process and a very well governed process. Glad to say, when we mentioned the figures earlier, that when we look at computer and look at PC or client, that it's in the early 90s of reuse, so that leaves you seven or eight points that have to be recycled. So it's quite small. It's really critical that we control the movement of goods.
• 6:59
  It's either quality that's reusable and we control that, or it's no longer viable and it's into recycling to recover plastics, metals and so forth. So when we look at our percentages, it's in the extreme small zero point something. And invariably, that is nothing to do with its reusability. It's more to do with a very end of chain. But ultimately, we're very focused on ensuring that it's in the absolute maximum we can achieve.
• 7:28
  Michael B: Yeah. Wow.
• 7:29
  Aubrey L: What a great interview and great opportunity to visit the Technology Renewal Center, Michael. Thanks so much. And we'll be back with more from that interview with Ray McGahn in a moment, so don't go anywhere. Alright. It's time for Today I Learned, the part of the show where we take a look at something happening in the world we think you should know about.
• 7:49
  Michael B: Absolutely. And this week, it's a short and not so sweet one. A major US bank has revealed that it thwarted, wait for it, 45,000,000,000 attempted security breaches per day in 2023. That's double the number for 2022. The bank in question, who we can't name on the podcast, made the announcement at the World Economic Forum where they commented on the ever growing threat posed by criminal gangs on their security.
• 8:18
  The bank's spokesperson announced that its cybersecurity spending now topped $15,000,000,000 a year, which included hiring over 60,000 specialist security personnel. A recent Bank of England survey, which we'll link to in the show notes, found that financial institutions think such attacks are the number one systematic risk to the sector. In a major survey of bank executives by KPMG last year, more than 70% said that cybersecurity was a major concern for their company, and we've linked that in the show notes too. That is an unbelievable number. 45,000,000,000 attempted hacks per day.
• 8:59
  Oh.
• 9:00
  Aubrey L: That is absolutely astonishing. Thanks, Michael. And we've actually got a few episodes on cybersecurity on our sister podcast, Technology Untangled. So do check those out.
• 9:09
  Michael B: Oh, yes. And we'll link to those in the show notes as well.
• 9:11
  Aubrey L: In the meantime, I wanna hear more about reusing our old IT. So, Michael, let's go back to your interview with Ray McGann at the Technology Renewal Center.
• 9:21
  Michael B: So tell me about the packaging that's used here because Yeah. Clearly, you know, this whole center, the idea is that stuff is not going to landfill. It's gonna be reused. Yeah.
• 9:33
  Ray McGann: So what you'll notice is the predominance of cardboard, and the inserts within are also made of a starch type material that ensures protection because these are valuable laptops that are going back out to customers. You clearly want them delivered in the shape that they left the facility in. But ultimately, we're very conscious that everything that comes out of this facility can be reused. That includes the packaging. And in reverse, equipment that comes into us that has already been packed by somebody else, we're very conscious of taking that packaging and getting it reengineered so that we can use it.
• 10:16
  And, of course, as I mentioned, when it goes out, we know that customers who receive this will be able to have it reused, whether they do it themselves or onward ship it to somebody else in the chain. This packaging will be reused by somebody else in the future.
• 10:32
  Michael B: So, Ray, what would you like to see being done differently in terms of the way that technology is reused?
• 10:38
  Ray McGann: Yeah, so first of all, when we look at the use of hard drives, ensuring that we don't have a destruction policy, challenging policies within organisations, what's happening with the old equipment? You know, that extra set of questions to an end user to say, what's being displaced? That extra question, so that customers know we can help them very specifically with that last piece of the jigsaw. Because if we don't, customers were then left to try and figure it out themselves. How do I get rid of this old equipment?
• 11:11
  Who do I go to? And to me, that kind of is a concern that those assets would seep out into the wrong industry hands, into the wrong place, and then becomes part of that landfill discussion. The landfill discussion is IT equipment, you know, goes out into landfill. It's rough order magnitude. Percentage wise, it's about six to 7% of landfill.
• 11:33
  So as a whole, it doesn't seem that much. But the reality of the toxicity of IT equipment, it's probably 65% to 70% of the toxic waste. So it's significantly damaging if it gets to the wrong stream in the wrong hands. Secondly is around getting the big message out through all our HPE colleagues out into the open market to their customers. And, you know, a third area is really around the significant developments we've had in HPE GreenLake, GreenLake platform and also GreenLake Business Edition.
• 12:10
  I think it is a huge distinction between HPE as a company versus many of our competitors. And the right sizing of infrastructure, making sure that customers don't have any zombie servers taking and consuming electricity without any production, I think is really innovative and certainly leading the market, as we know. From that vantage point, there's kind of a double benefit. One is we put in the right infrastructure that really helps manage the customer's environment perfectly well. It can expand, as we know, with the extra capacity, and ultimately, that gives customers comfort that if they need it, it's available.
• 12:50
  So they right size it. That is really driving a sustainable use of IT. The second impact, invariably, if we put in new architecture, something is getting displaced. And to me, that's the final little piece of our HPE GreenLake platform and HPE GreenLake private cloud is, okay, so we're putting in a new architecture that's perfectly sized to the customer's requirements. So for me, that's the final loop on a HPE GreenLake platform's HPE GreenLake private cloud, is to have that last conversation about, hey, how can we help you move your assets that are being displaced and bring them into the Erskine facility or bring them into Andover to ensure they get this kind of treatment, and that it's either going to be out for a new use, or if it's not viable, it's going to be managed through a controlled recycle program.
• 13:44
  Aubrey L: Thanks so much, Ray, for talking to us. It's been great to hear about the TRC's work, and you can find more on the topics discussed in today's episode in the show notes.
• 13:55
  Michael B: Right then. We are getting towards the end of the show, which means it is time for this week in history, which is a look at the monumental events in the world of business and technology, which has changed our lives. What was the clue last week, Aubrey?
• 14:08
  Aubrey L: The clue from last week was it's 1989, and where we're going, we don't need maps.
• 14:15
  Michael B: Did you
• 14:15
  Aubrey L: get it, Michael?
• 14:16
  Michael B: No. I didn't. I I didn't. I mean, apart from a popular movie, which I can't name, I don't I don't think I did. What is it?
• 14:24
  Aubrey L: I didn't either. But if you did, this week marks the anniversary of the launch of the first true GPS satellite. The satellite was USA 30 '5 and was known as a Block two GPS. The first of nine of its type launched within around eighteen months. There were earlier experimental versions known as Block one, but this marked the start of a fully functional system we know today.
• 14:50
  The satellites were designed to have a life of just seven point five years, but some ended up lasting more than seventeen years, only being phased out in 2007. In all, 78 block two satellite variants have been launched over the years, 31 of which are still active, sitting 20,000 kilometers, and that's about 12,427 miles above the Earth and letting everyone in the world know exactly where they are. Pretty awesome.
• 15:17
  Michael B: Yes. Now next week, the clue is it's 1971. Police, put down the keyboard. Any idea what that is, Aubrey?
• 15:26
  Aubrey L: Well, besides that being a famous band, I'm not really sure.
• 15:31
  Michael B: Well, you have to tune in next week to find out. And of course, that now brings us to the end of Technology Now for this week.
• 15:39
  Aubrey L: Thank you to our guest, Ray McGann, managing director of HPE Financial Services Ireland and worldwide enterprise IT asset life cycle leader. And to our listeners, thank you all so much for joining us.
• 15:52
  Michael B: Technology Now is hosted by Aubrey Lovell and myself, Michael Bird. And this episode was produced by Sam Datapoolen and Al Booth with production support from Harry Morton, Zoe Anderson, Alicia Kempson, Alison Paisley, Alyssa Mitry, Camilla Patel, Alex Podmore, and Chloe Sewell.
• 16:07
  Aubrey L: Our social editorial team is Rebecca Wissinger, Judy Ann Goldman, Katie Guarino, and our social media designers are Alejandra Garcia, Carlos Alberto Suarez, and Ambar Maldonado.
• 16:18
  Michael B: Technology Now is a lowest streak production for Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and, of course, we will see you next week. Cheers.