Sustainable Procurement & CSR News - ICT Industry

Sub-Saharan Africa stands at the brink of a digital revolution, where telecommunications and technology are poised to be the driving forces behind sustainable socio-economic development. With a youthful population and vast economic opportunities, the region is embracing digital transformation as a pathway to inclusive growth and prosperity.

A study conducted by IT advisory firm Coeus Consulting has found that 90% of IT leaders recognise sustainability as a key IT objective within their operations.

The study The critical role of technology leaders in delivering on sustainability targets also found that 88% of organisations surveyed have an IT sustainability strategy in place.

The majority of respondents (85%) also agreed that their organisation needs to be doing more when it comes to IT sustainability. What’s more, 80% agreed that IT and sustainability are intrinsically linked and that IT has a large impact on sustainability at their organisation.  

Samsung is committed to achieving a greener future by improving our sustainability and reducing our environmental and carbon footprint. As such, we have made significant investments to minimize the ecological impact of our operations, accelerate the design and development of green technology, apply circular economy principles, and guide consumers in making socially conscious decisions. Recently, at First Look 2021, CES 2021 and Galaxy UNPACKED 2021 we unveiled several purposeful innovations meant to create a positive long-term impact on our planet.

Apple said on Monday it has put its Taiwanese supplier Pegatron on probation after finding that the company violated Apple’s supplier code of conduct by asking student employees to work night shifts or overtime, Reuters reported.

Google was the first major company to become carbon neutral, in 2007. Now, the tech giant says it is the first company in the world to eliminate its entire carbon footprint.

Google has announced that, as of today, it has eliminated all of the carbon it has emitted since its founding in 1998.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise released its annual Living Progress Report for 2018, demonstrating that leveraging technology to tackle our world’s major human and environmental challenges drives business value and can open new long-term economic opportunities. “From protecting our environment to advancing human rights, it is imperative that we make progress for society by conducting our business in an ethical, sustainable, socially conscious way,” said HPE CEO Antonio Neri.

“This study reinforces what HP has long emphasised – social responsibility is a must-have for the modern workforce, and only appears to be growing in significance,” expressed Elisabeth Moreno, MD of HP Africa. “Yet the study highlights a concerning and growing divide between the understood need for sustainable office supplies and the addressing of this – for example with the false belief all ink and toner cartridges are recyclable,” she adds.

The Digital, Data and Technology Services (DDTS) unit of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has formed a partnership with the private sector to create Joint Sustainable Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) group to promote ICT sustainability. Private sector companies in the group include Dell, Atos, Vodafone, IBM, Capgemini, Ark, HPE, Tier 1, Xerox and DXC.

Printing giant Lexmark has announced what it claims are a series of industry-disrupting printer models designed to “reset the industry standard,” and it has business customers firmly in its sights.

The company’s new 9-Series models promise to deliver versatility and simplicity, but more importantly, Lexmark also wants to tackle sustainability with its latest additions.

Transitioning from a linear to a circular economy has been widely envisioned as a key strategy to significantly improve the sustainability of human society. To investigate the adoption of circularity indicators in the electrical and electronic industries, a paper has been published in the Sustainability.

HP has made its Sustainable Impact initiative, diversity and inclusion among its highest corporate priorities in recent years. Now the company plans to enable its HP Amplify partners to do the same.

The largest provider of PCs and printers began rolling out the new HP Amplify Impact program Thursday in 25 countries. HP will expand the program worldwide throughout 2021 to train and support those partners seeking to commit to sustainability impact.

Announced last summer and launched in November, HP Amplify is the company’s new data-driven, customer experience-focused partner program. The company decided to wait until that program was rolled out before adding the sustainability portion.

HP officials said committing to sustainability has already paid off. Its Sustainable Impact efforts generated $1 billion in new sales, according to the company’s most recent Sustainable Impact Report.

To make this process profitable, the manufacturers of complex items such as vehicles are likely to use advanced internet-based data systems that can track components and products throughout their life cycles, from source to final use. That means that the companies best suited to helping introduce a circular economic model are the big tech firms that already use similar online data technology, such as Microsoft, Amazon and Google.

And that will inevitably create concerns about the implications on data privacy and security. Further sacrificing our privacy might be the price we have to pay to achieve a waste-free economic model. Or to put it another way, data protection may ultimately become a barrier to a circular economy.

Latest Greening Government strategy points to demanding new sustainable procurement rules for IT suppliers

The government has this week unveiled a new strategy for reducing the environmental impact of its digital activities over the next five years, in a bid to meet its Greening Government Commitments and ensure that all its IT supplier have credible net zero emissions strategies in place.

In the policy paper, titled Greening the government: ICT and digital services strategy, the government pledges to ensure its "digital infrastructure and associated supply chains are rationalised, responsible, resilient and free of slavery/exploitation creating environmental, economic benefits for all".

Lenovo has again been recognized by the Corporate Knights’ Global 100 List as a leading business committed to its sustainable practices at Davos today.

In line with its larger sustainable business strategy, LG will look to reduce carbon emissions from its global operations by 50 percent compared to a 2017 baseline by implementing various carbon reduction and renewable energy initiatives. This effort will help bring LG closer to reaching its ultimate goal of carbon neutrality, achieving a net-zero carbon emissions footprint by balancing carbon emissions with carbon removal.

HP Inc. announced a bold vision for print sustainability, pledging that every page printed with HP will support a forest-positive future, carbon neutrality and materials designed to reduce impacts to the planet. Built on HP’s longstanding commitment to environmental innovation, this new vision supports the company’s ongoing efforts to deliver its most environmentally sustainable product portfolio while transforming its business to a more efficient, circular and sustainable model. 

This year will be a watershed moment for the smart cities movement, as technology companies will be forced to demonstrate return on investment (ROI) on an accelerated time horizon. Those products and services that are low cost, leverage existing city assets, and focus relentlessly on process improvement for city systems will be the big winners in 2019. This can only be achieved if the public works and sustainability departments of a city are on the same page. Technology can bring these two departments of city government together, ensuring that they are oriented towards delivering more effective service and more sustainable outcomes.