This is the first episode of TechRepublic’s Tech Impact video series.. The following is an edited transcript of the video.
From the smallest phone in your pocket to the largest container ships crossing our oceans, plastic is ubiquitous, versatile and destructive. While this synthetic material has become essential in our daily lives, its overuse does a lot of harm.
Plastic pollutes our oceans, harms wildlife, contaminates our food supply and clogs landfills. From 1950 to 2017, the United Nations Environment Program estimated that more than 7 billion tons of plastic waste has been produced worldwide. According to the World Economic Forum, more than 400 million tons is produced every year. UNEP also reports that each year 85% of plastic waste ends up in landfills. The International Union for Conservation of Nature reported that every year 14 million tons enters our oceans.
The responsibility for this waste cannot be attributed to a diffuse group of individuals but to a small group of companies. According to Index of plastic waste manufacturersjust 20 companies are responsible for more than half of the world’s disposable plastic waste.
There are many ways for technology companies to reduce their plastic consumption. These are practical steps to creating a greener future without sacrificing the whole way we make and sell products. And technology leaders are beginning to see that measuring and reducing the environmental impact of their businesses can have benefits such as improved efficiency and improved reputation.
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Regulators keep an eye on the company
Many standards organizations have already defined templates for setting sustainability goals. After all, the first step to solving the problem is to come up with a plan.
For example, the Environmental Rating Tool for Electronic Products and the Global Reporting Initiative’s standards have detailed far-reaching environmental and sustainability benchmarks; these vary widely by industry. The GRI, for example, takes into account the use of energy, the rights of indigenous peoples, biodiversity, waste and much more.
SEE: Sustainability and superapps top Gartner’s 2023 Top 10 Trends list (TechRepublic)
Focusing on plastics, jurisdictional issues sometimes get complicated. After all, the person who can perform a sustainability audit on the cafeteria often doesn’t visit the factory. Mike Zamis, chief product officer of the ESG platform and consultancy Sphera, said companies need to ensure their ESG metrics are repeatable, measurable, transparent and auditable.
Dell’s efforts to go “green”
Dell has established several long-term internal goals regarding environmental, social and corporate governance. Zero carbon emissions by 2050 was one of many goals, along with 100% of its packaging and 50% of its products made from renewable or recycled materials by 2030. Dell is also working with NextWave, an organization which focuses on keeping plastic out of waterways. .F
Katie Green, Dell’s global product manager and sustainability strategist, said materials caught in the ocean have been broken down by salt and sun and cannot be used. Collecting ocean-bound plastic before it reaches the water means more materials are available to reinject into the economy. Therefore, Dell tries to build recyclability into its designs from the start.
For example, the lid of Dell’s Latitude 5000 laptop is made of 21% bioplastic. This plastic comes from tall oil, a by-product of the papermaking process; Another 20% is carbon fiber recovered from the aerospace industry. Moving plastics between industries like this extends their useful life. This in turn contributes to early efforts to create a “circular economy”. In this economic structure, many products and materials are recycled, refurbished or repaired in order to get the most out of them.
Around and around the circular economy
We talked about keeping the plastic in use longer. How about completely cutting the plastic from the products?
Many companies start their journey by reducing plastic in their packaging before moving on to electronic products themselves.
Green also detailed a project to eliminate plastic bags from packaged adapters. Originally, Dell adapters came with a plastic bag over the power cord and another over the adapter; now Dell uses paper strips around both. It took a lot of trial and error, and it’s still an ongoing project. Some early drafts of this design used rubber or paper embedded in the box. The paper strips were chosen so that the final product could resist scratches and scuffs. After all, protecting the adapter is the primary purpose of packaging.
In order to make the change, Dell first contacted its existing list of packaging suppliers and asked what was available. Subsequently, Dell reached out to new suppliers, looking for those doing innovative work in the area of sustainable packaging in particular.
Green says this process pushed Dell’s suppliers to think outside the box. The company also needed to review its contractors to ensure ESG standards were being met across the board. This generates enthusiasm and interest in sustainable packaging throughout the chain and opens up new businesses, she said. Overall, the change wasn’t as difficult as Dell’s designers expected, with plenty of options.
Reduce waste before it happens
Other efforts focus on removing certain materials from the entire process. For example, Microsoft’s Aspire Vero laptop uses 30% recycled plastic in the chassis and 50% recycled plastic on the keyboard caps. Additionally, Microsoft does not use any paint on this line of laptops; this reduces the risk of it producing volatile organic compounds, which can vaporize into the air as pollution. Apple aims to completely stop using plastics in packaging by 2025.
Other materials commonly used in everyday life can also be recycled as consumer products. Samsung recently started using recycled plastics and discarded fishing nets in all of its product lines.
Not all recycled plastics are created equal
Welcome to the reuse part of “reduce, reuse, recycle”. Another way to reduce plastics is to not have to make new packaging at all. Zamis recommends an attempt at returning to the “milkman method,” where customers return empty milk bottles to refill them. This is to facilitate recycling. Incentives such as putting a return fee on a bottle or making products more robust could also help eliminate the need for new products. Most plastic products are built with an expected lifespan of a year or less, but chemicals last forever.
“They are victims of their own success,” Zamis said.
This one-year lifespan can hamper attempts to reuse plastic. Part of the challenge, Green points out, is achieving the same material properties as first-use plastic. Post-consumer recycled plastic can vary widely in quality depending on where it comes from.
Customers have certain assumptions about material properties, Green said. A laptop is expected to be durable, after all; it must also meet specific durability standards for manufacturing. These limit the amount of plastic mix that can be bio-based or post-consumer.
A similar reliable source is CD disc cases, which are no longer in demand but have been produced in huge quantities. Post-industrial or pre-consumer plastic like industrial waste should also be part of the conversation. These can be used in all industries.
And after?
Despite all the solutions and methods that these tech companies have developed to solve the plastics problem, all of them still face many challenges in turning sustainability from a dream into a practical plan. In addition, regulations in this area can change quickly.
The UK introduced a plastic tax in 2022, which penalizes any plastic product made in or imported into the UK that does not contain at least 30% recycled plastic. The US Department of the Interior issued an order in 2022 banning single-use plastics on lands managed by the Department by 2032. California has a similar law to reduce single-use plastics over time.
How to get management buy-in
To sell the idea to the management team of a tech company, the phasing out of single-use plastics may need to be pitched as an innovation. Can the first company that figures out how to replace electronics like milk bottles attract a key segment of customers invested in reducing consumption while still having the latest model?
Ultimately, the reduction part of “reduce, reuse, recycle” may prove to be the biggest challenge, but efforts like these show that it’s part of the serious conversations happening at the corporate level. Today.
Read next: ESG: How Organizations Drive Employee Empowerment and Business Outcomes with Cutting-Edge Digital Workplace Technology (TechRepublic)
