Data center operators who want to be sustainable tend to focus in on carbon - but there are a lot more elements in the Periodic Table, And as we progress towards sustainability, we are going to have to consider all of them.
In this podcast, Astrid Wynne Rogers, sustainability lead at TechBuyer tells us why we should pay close attention to the lifecycle of our physical servers and the other equipment in our facilities.
It takes a lot of materials and energy to make equipment, and keeping it out of the waste stream could avoid wasting those resources. But there's more to it than sticking it in a skip for recycling. The circular economy has to join up. With a value put on refurbished equipment, and people actively working to reuse and extend that kit.
It used to be said that replacing old kit with new always saved energy, because Moore's law meant the new equipment was much faster. That is no longer the case, and TechBuyer did the research to prove it.
TechBuyer's paper is available here from IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Computing or here from Techbuyer.
Want another reason to increase your hardware's life? It's a powerful way to reduce "Scope 3" emissions from your supply chain. And you can't get to Net Zero without dealing with Scope 3.
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