Home-working: Demand for repurposed laptops soars

The world’s leading laptop remanufacturer, UK-based Circular Computing, reports that it has been producing three times its monthly output each week to meet soaring demand for laptops for home-working.

Since the coronavirus outbreak, businesses have struggled to source the IT needed for remote workers to continue to do their jobs from home. The run on orders for enterprise level laptops has meant that many manufacturers have asked businesses to be more creative in exploring alternatives, such as repurposed laptops.

Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, Circular Computing was facing rising demand from businesses for its top-brand carbon-neutral remanufactured laptops. Prices for new IT are rising and product is running short due to dwindling resources of the rare raw materials needed (for example, the cost of Palladium is up this year by 80%).

An unprecedented move by Hewlett-Packard (HP) represents the worldwide shift in thinking about how IT can be procured without costing the planet. The global brand has launched a direct mail campaign in Denmark promoting Circular’s remanufactured HP laptops as a direct alternative to buying new under the headline ‘We believe in reincarnation – at least when it applies to HP Notebooks’.

For a global brand to present a remanufactured model as a direct alternative to a new product is extremely unusual, and a highly significant endorsement of Circular Computing’s approach to sustainability at the high end of the consumer IT market. This is the first time that one of the world’s largest technology manufacturers has given over the same marketing spend to sustainable laptops as they do to their new products.

What is remanufacturing?

Unlike the unregulated refurbishment or second-user market, remanufacturing achieves a zero-compromise route to sustainable, cost-effective and high-performance IT.

As well as advising the EU and UN, Circular Computing helped the British Standards advisory committee to set the international ISO standards for remanufacturing, defined as ‘returning a used product to at least its original performance with a warranty that is equivalent to or better than that of the newly manufactured product’.

Circular Computing takes large volumes of units from around the world, remanufacturing up to 10,000 units each month at its purpose-built facility (the world’s first certified carbon-neutral laptop remanufacturing centre). Each machine undergoes a 5-hour upgrade to original high performance and pristine cosmetic condition. In fact, performance is greatly enhanced, with new battery installed as standard, upgraded components, and all known product or parts faults eradicated. Yet they cost between 30 and 50% less than their equivalent new model and are supplied with a 3-year warranty.

“The endorsement from HP recognises that our remanufactured laptops offer the perfect solution for people working remotely who want identical performance and reliability to a new machine, but at lower cost and with immediate availability,” Rod Neale, founder of Circular Computing, says.

“Plus, users have the peace of mind of knowing their purchase is genuinely ethical. Every Circular Computing laptop is certified carbon-neutral, and we invest in reforestation, renewable energy and social programmes worldwide.”

The unsustainable truth about IT

It takes 1200kg of mining materials and around 190,000 litres of water to make one new laptop, each releasing 380kg CO₂e into the atmosphere. More than 160 million new laptops are made every year, causing the same amount of greenhouse gas pollution as the entire airline industry, yet more than 300,000 disposed of daily in the US and Europe. They are also responsible for nearly 20% of electronic waste, the world’s fastest growing waste stream. 60% of the world’s supply of critical minerals used in manufacturing comes from the conflict regions in the DRC, mined by children as young as four, while hazardous chemicals used in the extraction, processing, production and dumping of IT, poison workers and contaminate groundwater reserves.

With these issues now centre-stage, Circular Computing is achieving, at scale, huge environmental benefits, economic value for customers and, as the momentous events of 2020 unfold, the supply needed for remote working en masse.