New carbon credit calculator helps organisations offset carbon emissions with old IT equipment

Blancco and CO2Neutral launch online carbon credit calculator

A new tool could help organisations securely dispose of old IT equipment in an environmentally friendly way and earn them money for doing so.

Launched by Blancco and CO2Neutral, the online calculator can be used by organisations in US and Canada to determine carbon credit and cash values for retired IT equipment, including servers and old laptops.

Organisations enter details about obsolete IT equipment into the online service and are provided with an approximate monetary value and number of carbon credits they would receive for reselling the assets instead of destroying them.

These cash credits, calculated and provided by CO2Neutral, are then offset against the cost of securely erasing data stored on the equipment, a vitally important security consideration when managing IT equipment lifecycles, which Blancco specialises in.

Once all the data is permanently erased by Blancco’s data sanitisation technology, a Certificate of Erasure is provided for each device that is processed, creating an audit trail to prove compliance with data retention and sanitisation regulations.

CO2Neutral then provides the company with carbon credits which can be used to offset other carbon emissions a company is generating, before refurbishing and reselling the assets on secondary markets on the customer’s behalf.

Alan Bentley, President, Global Sales and Marketing for Blancco, said the CO2Neutral partnership will encourage more companies to support reuse and responsible recycling of old IT assets rather than adding them to landfills, contributing to a more “circular economy” where products, equipment and infrastructure are given a second life rather than disposed of.

“Both Blancco and CO2Neutral are committed to promoting environmental sustainability best practices, so it made perfect sense that we work together to develop this unique program, and the calculator is a result of that,” Bentley said.

“By providing companies with visibility into the real value of their outdated, unused IT assets, we believe more organizations will be willing to work with ITAD refurbishers like CO2Neutral rather than destroy and dispose. They not only gain the financial rewards that come from a reuse and recycling program but also improve their reputations as good corporate citizens who are working to protect our increasingly fragile environment.”

The Data Erasure Carbon Credits Calculator is now available online.