Creating a Sustainable Device Lifecycle Management Practice

E-waste is quickly piling up. According to the United Nations University Global E-waste Monitor, e-waste is the fastest-growing waste stream in the world—with mobile phones and PCs making up nearly 10% of that total stream.

End-user devices, in particular, require organizations’ attention when it comes to mitigating environmental impact: Gartner reports these devices constitute a majority of IT’s carbon footprint.

Poor device lifecycle management is a major contributor to that footprint. There are several preventative, proactive practices they can take to extend the current lifecycle of their devices—which optimizes their use and curbs their environmental impact. In fact, 83% of business leaders report that successful sustainability initiatives create significant short- and long-term value for their organization.

IT teams may worry making changes to their device lifecycle management processes can result in downtime, inefficiencies, and performance issues. However, robust device lifecycle management actually enables higher productivity and better performance by mitigating the waste of time, resources, and actual physical devices. Here’s how organizations can ramp up their device lifecycle management to improve their environmental, social, and governance (ESG) outcomes.

Reduce intake: conduct a comprehensive device inventory audit

Organizations can use existing inventory to minimize their contribution to e-waste and optimize their current resources. By conducting a comprehensive device inventory audit, IT leaders can gain the visibility they need into the devices they have, which helps prevent unnecessary device additions or performance-affecting device reductions.More specifically, an inventory audit can help leaders:

• Track lifecycle stages. Audits can catalog devices by their lifecycle stage, which purchase date, warranty status, and maintenance history all inform. This helps IT leaders gain a more accurate understanding of how usable or up-to-task each device is, which helps teams maximize their lifetime use. This can make the difference between throwing away a perfectly good device because it’s “old” or increasing an “old” device’s lifetime value, which preserves money and resources.
• Optimize device usage. Understanding device inventory allows organizations to assess device usage. IT leaders can easily reallocate underutilized devices, prevent unnecessary new purchases, extend the lifespan of existing assets, and reduce e-waste.
• Streamline device budgeting. When IT leaders know all the devices in their inventory, what they’re capable of, and where they are in their lifecycle, they can forecast future device needs with greater accuracy. This allows for better budget allocation and prevents overspending on unnecessary resources, which also reduces an organization’s carbon footprint.

Inventory audits also reframe corporate attitudes around older devices, and therefore, mitigate waste by extending their lifetime use. For starters, older devices are not necessarily useless devices. Based on Gartner’s research, while most organizations still set three to four-year refresh cycles for employee laptops, organizations have found that only a small fraction of those devices have performance metrics that would justify replacement within that time frame. Extending their life span represents millions of dollars in potential cost savings.

Repair and retain: Fix devices when you can

Organizations should err on the side of repair instead of throwing devices away. Unilaterally getting rid of devices when they get “too old,” even when they still have considerable lifetime use in them, wastes resources, IT support time (because IT teams need to replace them), and money. 

In fact, an overwhelming majority of older devices could have their lifetime use extended with simple repairs and maintenance. As such, IT leaders should institute priorities around:

• Hardware performance insights. IT leaders can utilize digital experience management (DEM) to optimize device lifecycle management. DEM can help organizations focus on actual device performance as opposed to a static calendar timeline, which helps extend device lifespan.
• Flexible life span policies. Treat each and every device as a unique circumstance. Organizations should avoid adopting singular life span policies that risk throwing away usable existing devices. IT leaders manage life span policies with DEM data that informs device performance.
• Employee-focused energy reduction. How an employee treats and maintains their devices is a major factor in device reliability. Organizations can mitigate device wear and tear by instituting policies around employee use, including battery preservation, power management settings, and sleep settings.

Restructure and recycle: Bake sustainability into device selection and procurement

Incorporating sustainability goals into procurement strategies can build a stronger foundation of device lifecycle management by uplifting environmental priorities from the beginning. IT leaders can incorporate sustainability into their procurement processes by:

• Seeking out vendors that ship devices in responsible packaging.
• Ensuring devices have specific ecolabel certifications, such as 80 PLUS, Energy Star, and EPEAT.
• Initiating tests to compare the energy efficiency of different device models.
• Sourcing devices from responsible providers with commitments to sustainability.

Organizations can also leverage third-party assistance to collect and evaluate data needed to assess their vendors’ ESG performance to ensure they’re meeting ESG goals. They should also ensure that their vendors are engaging supply chains with similar priorities around sustainability to enable multi-level reduction in e-waste.

Improving device lifecycle management from the ground up

Incorporating sustainability initiatives throughout device lifecycle management can be helpful in reducing e-waste and optimizing performance. 

Few strategies can match the impact of implementing an eco-conscious mindset from the very beginning of every device lifecycle. IT leaders with greater sustainability ambitions can take device lifecycle management to the next level by keeping sustainability top of mind during procurement, defining employee responsibilities for energy conservation, and, of course, gaining and maintaining visibility of all devices for better insights into their utilization. Those three strategies combined shrink carbon footprints and maximize ESG outcomes.

Find out how to make sustainable IT a reality by checking out our white paper, The Role of Unified Observability in Sustainable IT.