Latest circular economy publications

Microsoft’s “green summer” just got even greener after the tech giant launched yet another ambitious environmental goal and a roadmap about how it plans to achieve it.

The 45-year-old tech company’s latest pledge is to eliminate waste for direct operations, products and packaging by 2030.

In a blog post, Microsoft President Brad Smith said the company recognised “the urgent need to protect the world’s ecosystems and reduce the carbon emissions that come from the creation, distribution and disposal of waste”.

Circular economy is all about creating a roadmap from ‘cradle to grave’ to ‘cradle to cradle’. The ideal is to create a system that is regenerative by design, which minimises harmful emissions and turns waste into manufacturing resource. ‘Eternal life’ for our equipment is the great modern-day challenge, but it is by no means an impossible dream.

Technology is rightly hailed as a force for good in making the world a fairer, more sustainable place. However, meeting the needs of an increasingly digitalised society has a material cost.

With more and more transactions, processes and communication transferring to the online world, energy usage and greenhouse gasses are increasing faster in this sector than most.

A significant proportion of this is embodied energy in the hardware, which accounts for roughly 50 percent of overall impact. While this is far from exclusive to the data centre sector, it is something we will need to be increasingly aware of going forward. The good news is that the industry is responding with new research into more sustainable solutions.

Deborah Andrews, lead partner of CEDaCI and associate professor of design at LSBU, unpacks the project aiming to develop a robust, secure and economically viable supply chain for data centre equipment The origins of the circular economy can be traced back to the Swiss architect and economist Walter Stahel, who coined the term “cradle to... Read More

In the transition to a circular economy for any industry, the responsibilities boil down to designing out waste and pollution, and extending the life of products and materials. That calls for a transition to green and renewable energy sources, the reuse of excess heat and a complete redesign of all the building blocks that make... Read More