Sustainable IT: IT Leaders Take A Close Look At Common IT Practices

A new report by Nexthink has examined trends in IT sustainability, including hardware upgrades rather than replacements, improving start-up time and training employees to use IT in a greenway.

Nexthink has published the new report “Avoid E-Waste: Sustainable Workplace IT in Numbers”. Accordingly, bad IT habits can be discarded, and the status of end devices can be better checked. This can reduce environmental impact and contribute to a more sustainable future. Many of Nexthink’s customers, providers of solutions for Digital Employee Experience Management, have also set themselves the goal of introducing sustainable IT and reducing their ecological-digital CO2 footprint. They took the opportunity to reduce their CO2 emissions based on the data from the collaboration with Nexthink. They also want to reduce waste products throughout the organization.

This report focuses on the data collected in the first few weeks of implementing 3.5 million anonymized devices. It examined how IT leaders in different countries can reduce costs and their environmental footprint while improving the IT experience of employees. Three important practices for sustainable IT were examined.

Sustainable IT: Don’t Automatically Replace Every Device

The report draws attention to the widespread habit in companies of replacing hardware every few years, regardless of its condition. Nexthink’s research found that 20 per cent of these devices are still performing and don’t need to be replaced. And of the 80 per cent that exhibited low performance, only 2 per cent were beyond salvage – the remaining 98 per cent could be preserved for continued operation with a simple RAM upgrade or boot speed optimization. Companies that perform these small repairs save millions and contribute less to the global e-waste problem.

Testing And Improving Device Boot Times

Thirty-four per cent of the 3.5 million end devices anonymously checked for the Nexthink report took longer than five minutes to boot up. They cause more than 450 tons of CO2 emissions per year – the equivalent of around 190,000 litres of gasoline. This waste can be avoided by better assessing the health of employees’ devices, better understanding user habits, and taking a proactive approach to common IT issues.

Employee Training On Environmentally Friendly Computing Habits

A lack of understanding of employees’ digital habits leads to higher emissions and reduced computer speeds. The research found that games, personal communications, and streaming apps combined to cause 33 tons of CO2 emissions per year on the 3.5 million devices examined. It would take 300 trees to absorb those emissions for a full year, to put that in perspective. Based on this report’s sample, IT leaders have the opportunity to reduce at least 695 kilograms of their company’s carbon emissions per week. To do this, they must educate their employees about better computing habits and eliminate high-emission applications.

Sustainable IT: Understanding The Way Employees Work

“Creating a more sustainable work environment is a top priority for companies today. But while many CSR initiatives focus on reducing single-use plastic and eliminating paper waste, they overlook the high emissions that their IT hardware and digital activities produce every day. IT leaders have a responsibility to understand better the environmental impact of their employees’ digital footprint. To proactively address digital issues that contribute to environmental pollution,” said Yassine Zaied, Chief Strategy Officer at Nexthink.

“Simple actions such as ensuring software is up to date, turning off laptops when not in use, and removing unnecessary applications can reduce emissions and save businesses money. However, most companies would love to make these changes. Many find it difficult to do this efficiently without a concrete approach. CSR improvements are possible when companies can understand and respond appropriately to how their people work and the challenges they face.”

For more on how IT impacts the environment and what IT leaders can do to make IT sustainable, please read the report Avoiding E-Waste: Sustainable Workplace IT in Numbers.

Nexthink is a software provider for the management of digital employee experiences. Nexthink offers IT leaders insight into the IT experience of employees at the device level to actively shape future-oriented work environments. This enables IT teams, to move from reactive problem solving to proactive IT service.

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