Tech companies are feeling more pressure to adopt more impactful sustainability strategies.
CES 2024 arrived with announcements from the biggest tech companies around that showed off new devices and teased exciting technology. But another trend is the various ways sustainability has crept into keynotes and presentations that talk about the environmental impact of all those shiny, new gadgets on store shelves.
The big change for CES 2024 is a focus on what goes into your product. Unlike previous years when companies had pledges to source energy from green power or buy carbon offsets, which sustainability experts have criticized for not reducing emissions, they’re expanding their use of recycled materials in devices and displays.
As CES wound down, Google announced its new policy supporting the Right to Repair movement and the user’s right to fix their own devices. This includes making tools, parts and repair manuals available to device owners — including Pixel phone owners. Combined with Google’s commitment to supply the latest Pixel 8 series with seven years of software updates, it seems like more device manufacturers are acknowledging consumer desire to keep their devices around for longer, which means fewer old devices thrown away into landfills and contributing to climate woes.
At the outset of 2024, the tech industry is becoming more aware of the importance of sustainability — either because it’s recognizing that it needs to account for all the ways producing new technologies contributes to climate change, or because the growing public awareness of industrial impact on climate change means they can’t ignore their own contribution.
« [Device] buyers are still asking about carbon emissions (upstream and downstream) but they also want to know about the materials that are being used, the recyclability of the product that they buy, etc., » said Bjoern Stengel, Global Sustainability Research lead at the International Data Company. Getting the most use out of devices and reuse of their materials is becoming a major differentiator for those buying tech, especially in commercial uses like information technology.
Over 70% of companies surveyed by IDC moved beyond the early stages of talking about sustainability and now need to make measurable progress on their set targets to please shareholders, Stengel said. Companies are reliably reporting their environmental impact data and using sustainability measures to find cost savings. Their next task is to stand out from the competition with their sustainability approaches. For IT professionals who can see the scaled impact of replacing products, using sustainable materials and recycling equipment is attractive. But consumers are still waking up to the impact of their frequent device upgrades.
« Today, most consumers have no clue on how damaging for the planet it is to regularly renew their smartphone hardware. Once they realize, sustainability will become a key way to differentiate between premium smartphone brands, » said Forrestor Vice President and Principal Analyst Thomas Husson.
In the smartphone space, the extended-lifespan Fairphone is an eco-friendly choice but still too niche, Husson said. Apple has begun to use sustainability to differentiate its products, which will set the tone for the rest of the phones industry, and Samsung will likely expand on previous efforts to incorporate more recycled materials into its devices.
In the home, European Union regulation is pushing appliance makers like Miele, Groupe Seb and Arcelik to adopt more sustainable measures and embrace a circular economy — ensuring that devices reaching the ends of their use lives have their most valuable parts recycled into new products.
« While only a niche of consumers is effectively paying a premium for greener products today, our data suggests that a majority would like more environmental value for the same price, » Husson said. « Firms who revisit their value chain and innovation approaches with their ecosystem of partners are best placed to take advantage of this opportunity. »Recycling materials in more of your gadgets
More companies are pledging to use recycled materials in their products, which could help reduce emissions and waste by finding second lives for parts of old devices that would otherwise be headed for landfills, including metals and rare earth materials whose extraction and integration contribute to climate change.
