ITAD electronics recycling

ESG Explained: How ITAD can help with ESG goals?

Awareness
14 July, 2021 / Dave Beal, Chief Compliance Officer

How ITAD can help with ESG goals

It seems like every day a new organization is pledging to reduce their carbon footprint and enhance environmental goals. It’s no secret the world is enduring rapid change. Countless governments, CEOs and boards of directors are making significant changes in the way they function to reduce their impact on the environment. At the same time, they are also striving to be more socially conscious. Many are doing so by focusing on ESG goals. But what exactly is ESG and why does it matter?

What is ESG?

ESG has three focus areas: environmental, social and corporate governance. Environmental criteria relate to how well a company performs with respect to their environmental impact. Social criteria focuses on how a company manages relationships with employees, customers and the communities within which it operates. Finally, governance refers to a company’s leadership, executive pay and shareholder rights.

ESG

Why does it matter?

In addition to all of the more obvious benefits you might receive from enhancing ESG goals, such as cleaner air, happier employees and a fairer work environment, many organizations are requiring companies to have positive ESG goals in place before they will even entertain working with them. In fact, PwC recently announced their five-year plan to start a major push for ESG. They will “invest $12 billion over five years to create 100,000 new jobs aimed at helping its clients grapple with climate and diversity reporting as part of its new global strategy.” That’s a pretty clear indicator for the future importance of ESG goals in the business community.

How does ITAD fit in?

Proper ITAD can align with your ESG goals in many ways. There are several core components of ITAD, including data security, remarketing and recycling, and each of them provides substantial ways to enhance ESG.

  1. Complete Data Security

As Forbes states, data governance is the next big ESG controversy and “industry leaders will need to establish better disclosure and transparency on their overarching data governance strategy.” Data security from ITAD services can help in this strategy. With proper data sanitization and destruction procedures in place, companies can rest assured knowing their confidential data is handled with care. Whether it’s customer or employee data, or your organization’s private information, proper end-of-life security measures are essential for reputation management and social and corporate governance.

  1. Certified Remarketing

Most environmentalists agree that the best form of recycling is reuse. By keeping products in use, fewer new products need to be made. This equates to less mining, less emissions and less overall consumption, enhancing the circular economy and your ESG goals at the same time. Another bonus? By choosing an ITAD provider with a highly-skilled remarketing division, you will likely see a tangible cash return on your IT investment.

  1. Environmentally-Friendly Recycling

Proper recycling might be the most obvious way ITAD helps organizations achieve ESG goals. Electronic waste contains toxic materials that are harmful to our health and environment, yet the world produces as much as 50 million tons of electronic waste per year, according to the United Nations. Organizations can do their part by ensuring all truly end-of-life technology is disassembled down to plastic, steel, aluminum, circuit boards, wire, power supplies, etc. From this point, raw materials can be distributed to other manufacturing facilities that will reprocess those materials into new finished goods.

By identifying and working toward proper ESG goals, you can help keep your organization at the forefront of innovation, open up new business opportunities and keep investors happy. An in-depth report by Deloitte found that purpose-driven companies witness higher market share gains and grow three times faster on average than their competitors, all while achieving higher workforce and customer satisfaction.

As one of the world’s leading global IT asset disposition providers, EPC’s premium ITAD service offering and geographic footprint is unmatched. From a wide-range of data security options to environmentally-sustainable disposal, our comprehensive solutions cover every aspect of IT disposal.  With a variety of tactics in place designed to assist in fulfilling ESG criteria, EPC continues to help organizations achieve their goals.