Elaine and Ross hate recycling. Both know first hand about our computers’ and smartphones’ life. About the wasted opportunities to better use the precious resources into it. Elaine Brown is the CEO of the Edinburgh Remakery who refurbished 295 laptops last year. She’s also a keen expert on the right to repair issues. Ross Cockburn is the Trustee of Reusing IT who has been dealing with repaired devices from Africa to Ukraine over the last 25 years. 

Gael Duez sat down with them to cover multiple topics such as: 

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ROSS COCKBURN (00:01 )

Recently the game changer for everybody in Elaine and I's world has been solid state drives. You can take a solid state hard drive and we have done this already, a Core 2 machine which is 20 years old and that machine will perform as quickly as a lot of people's brand new laptop.

Gaël Duez (00:21 )

Hello everyone. Welcome to Green IO. I'm Gael Duez and in this podcast, we empower responsible technologists to build a greener digital world, one bite at a time. Twice a month on a Tuesday, guests from across the globe share insights, tools and alternative approaches, enabling people within the tech sector and beyond to boost digital sustainability.

Today, I'm going to share with you one of my secret recipes. When I deliver a keynote or talk about the environment of footprint of tech, I often ask the audience if they have a smartphone. They tend to laugh. I'm not sure why. Then I ask them to take it and to guess its weight. After a few seconds of auction style interaction, I deliver the right weight, which is around 70 kilo, because to build a smartphone, need around 15 kilos of fossil and 55 kilos of minerals. And this doesn't take into account the tons of water needed to extract the components and manufacture the device. And this doesn't take into account all the greenhouse gas emitted during its life cycle or the pollution emitted, including during its end of life phase, better known as e-waste. These numbers are the reasons why our guests today hate recycling. They know firsthand about our computers and smartphones life. The wasted opportunities to better use the precious resources Elaine Brown is the CEO of the Edinburgh Remakery who refurbished 295 laptops last year. She's also a keen expert on the right to repair issues. Ross Cockburn is a trustee of Reducing IT who has been dealing with repaired devices from Africa to Ukraine over the last 25 years. So welcome to the show, both of you. It's a pleasure to keep on exploring the rich and vibrant

Elaine Brown (02:12 )

Thanks.

Gaël Duez (02:23 )

British ecosystem of IT sustainability. I didn't say English because both of you, you're based in Scotland. Welcome to the show.

Elaine Brown (02:31 )

Thanks, lovely to be here.

Gaël Duez (02:33 )

My pleasure as well. And bonjour. If we go for French, guess quite a lot of the listeners will be a bit lost, but thanks for making the effort, Ross.

ROSS COCKBURN (02:41 )

Well, good.

Gaël Duez (02:43 )

You know that Green IO London is actually in one week. And the topic this year is good for business, good for the planet with a question mark because we will discuss this assumption. And when we were preparing the episode, actually something struck me, it is possible to save money while doing cleverly decommissioning of IT devices, because more and more it costs money. So it could be the case of good for business, good for repairing IT devices.

ROSS COCKBURN (03:14 )

Clearly if you've got devices running your business and they are five years old and you're going to replace them but you give them six years then that's going to go for your business isn't it? It's going to be good for the bottom line. You're going to save money. So there's two sides to this good for business, know, good for the planet. There's profit making and there's saving money and the two quite often don't sit very well together. They're uneasy bedfellows as we would say because you'll have accountants saying we need more sales and then you'll have accountants saying well actually we need to reduce some of the cost here in the business because if you reduce the cost effectively if you half the cost you double the profits

Elaine Brown (04:05 )

I think it's a no brainer. Of course, being sustainable with your tech is good for business and good for planet. And that is the basis of what the Edinburgh Remake is based on. It's really driving those businesses to understand that the tech that they have, they have to have it. We understand that it's a digital age. But what they can do is the end of life of their tech and their journey in that business is not the end of life for that tech. And that's where businesses sometimes have that mismatch. think, we don't want it, we don't value it, you know, and we'll just buy some new. But what they can do is in that buying new stuff, they can think about what they are discarding. And if they donate it to the remake, we… are sort of Scotland's leading social ITADs, But different to other ITADs is that the key is on the social layer because it's the ESG is. Donate your end of tech, you don't want it, but there are millions of other people for whom that tech has still got life and we can do amazing things with it and it's that ESG piece. And for us, it's created our business. So it is good for business for us because it's created green jobs and it's great for the planet because it's tackling that e-waste, but it's also doing something magical around the social. It's about giving that gift of connectivity to other people. And for the businesses themselves that are donating the tech, it's good for their business for them because their consumers more and more are demanding that they become more sustainable. That's important to them. So if they can demonstrate that they're doing that, that's great for their bottom line because they're going to get more consumers, more customers choosing their service rather than another company because they know that they've got sustainability at heart. So for me, your title of your conference coming up in London is spot on. It is good for business and it's good for the planet for our communities.

Gaël Duez (05:57 )

That's an interesting feedback, Elaine. There is just something that I'd like to clarify. Obviously, if you're a B2C company or if your enterprise customers pay a lot of attention to sustainability, yes, there is a clear benefit of running a more more sustainable business and lett