One of the most important legal requirements nowadays for any company is to make its environmental and social impact report in conjunction with its financial statement. Non-financial reporting has become a fundamental part of any company in Europe and although it is still at a young stage we must pay attention to this as citizens and as workers.

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The environmental impact is in all the activities we do in our daily lives: moving around in your car or public transport has an environmental cost, turning on the stove (whether electric or gas), taking a bath, etc., has an environmental cost. But perhaps one of the most complex objects to measure is our electronic equipment. Avfall Sverige (The Swedish Waste Management and Recycling association) speaks of an #invisiblewaste (1) and we see this campaign as a perfect example how electronic equipment are in proportion per unit more resource intensive than other objects (a blue jean uses about 25 kg of waste to be created, a smartphone 86 kg and a computer between 1200 and 1500 kg)(2). If we add to this the fact that planned obsolescence is a design principle for many OEMs, ODMs and EMSs we have to avoid recycling and leave it as a last resort and always try to reuse the components (as spare parts) or simply fix and prepare the equipment to be sold in a secondary market.

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    At Circular Technologies we believe that the way to take advantage of these resources that were used to create the laptops we use today is to insist on reusing, repairing and giving new life to ICT equipment.