COP26, the 26^th United Nations Climate Change conference is taking place in Glasgow, Scotland, this week and is making headlines around the world. Boris Johnson told world leaders at the event this week that we were all now “one minute to midnight” in running down the clock against fighting climate change. Sound familiar? It’s certainly a sentiment Procurri has been echoing for a long time.

Indeed the “minute to midnight” sentiment is already delayed – COP26 (“Conference of the Parties”, the 26^th event) was due to take place in November 2020 but was postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic and its impact on the two intended host countries, the UK and Italy. During this year, Procurri experienced an uplift in customers needing help as well as an influx of those in the channel turning toward more sustainable IT solutions in a bid to survive as a business without disruption to their end users. Although Covid-19 changed the way the world worked in so many ways, it did mean that many people and companies had to park their sustainability efforts to focus on delivering whatever services they could.

Truly, this situation has only expedited the urgency of the need to address climate change at all levels, through changes both big and small. It’s no longer about the few doing a lot: there is little doubt that climate change will and is affecting us all. It is now about the many doing something, every contribution counts no matter how small it may appear. It is the power of the collective that will help address climate change.

There is a common misconception that businesses can only adopt sustainability methods if they have a large budget and appetite to do so – which is unsurprisingly not often the priority for all, especially in the wake of a global pandemic. However, this is not the case. In reality, there are hefty financial savings to be made by managing IT equipment differently – and value to be added at all stages of the IT lifecycle. Allegedly 70% of the carbon produced on IT infrastructure is at the point of manufacture, this should be optimized through the extension of asset lifespan. Procurri’s approach to procuring remanufactured alternatives, offering extended hardware support of up to 10 years and beyond,  providing reuse options, and offering sustainable and ethical ITAD processes allows businesses to do just this, drawing out every penny of Carbon value they possibly can from their IT infrastructure.

So, is it this misunderstanding that has hindered businesses for so long in realizing their ability to operate more sustainably with their IT infrastructure ? Perhaps. Whereas those companies, like Procurri, who operate in the space, understand that just a little thought and small amount of research can create broad change across an organization and onward. Most organizations can make changes that have little to no impact on their day-to-day operations that provide a vast environmental win, coupled with financial benefit. The basics are not to be discounted: turn off what isn’t being used, reduce water temperature by a few degrees, consolidate shipping, reuse packaging, and sweat assets for as long as possible. When expanded to a global level, these all add up – and will undoubtedly have profound, positive environmental impact.