It’s fair to say that over the past couple of years in particular, the topic of sustainability is gaining a lot of traction in the marketplace, and the public sector is no exception. Topics such as circularity have become much more relevant in the mindsets of the business purchaser, and this awareness is also happening in terms of individuals and their personal thoughts on how they want to behave themselves, how they want their company, colleagues or employees to behave, and so on.
When you add to this the legislation efforts that have been put in place from an EU perspective, and then these being translated into national legislation for Continental Europe, you can see the momentum growing. Dynamics change across different countries of course. When you speak to those in Southern Europe, the concern is a lot less than with those in northern Europe, but nonetheless, the movement is everywhere and growing.
So, with more self awareness, coupled with legislation, we have an increased demand for circular products. The public sector of course is more driven by legislation that is in turn driven by the government. The sector is obliged to be more open to it, whereas in the private sector, the awareness has to come from the customer who puts the pressure on its suppliers.
I was at an event in Dublin recently where there was a company from Sweden who was describing how their purchasing decision has completely shifted to having hard requirements in terms of sustainability from their suppliers. They expect their suppliers to demonstrate what they are doing with respect to sustainability in multiple areas and price is no longer the overriding factor. Obviously, at the end of the day, it has to be a competitive offering. But it is something that is decided on at a more personal level by the decision makers in the company.
In the public sector, despite being more driven by legislation, there is still a challenge ahead, as we see that the purchasing behaviours of the decision makers haven’t really changed in the same way yet. On many occasions, even where there is legislation in place that requires 20 percent of the order to be circular, the people who run procurement often still do things the same way that they used to.
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For example, what is currently happening in some cases is that the RFP comes out where the requirement is for 1000 PCs with specific hardware requirements specifying the latest technologies that were just introduced to the market, and with the new laws in mind they add that 20 percent has to be circular. This causes an issue due to limited supply and it means that nobody can respond. So some procurement departments use it as an excuse to buy everything new and that they tried but it’s not possible, even though if they had made more effort in the planning in the first place, it would have been entirely possible.
I think the key message here is that people in both the public and private sectors have to rethink how they approach their purchasing requirements for circular IT. They can look at the overall requirements and identity where circular can easily fit into their plans.
Flex IT is first and foremost a technology company that delivers the right solutions so our customers can fulfil all their requirements in an efficient way, with a good price and in a sustainable fashion. However, when you start your discussions with customers and you tell people that they have to buy sustainable, but the sustainable solution you provide them with doesn’t do what they need it to do, they will no doubt go back and buy something else on top of that – and be worse off than they were before. It will also create a bad impression about the circular option in the mind of the customer for a long time to come.
If you bear in mind that in every organisation, people have different needs and different requirements when it comes to IT, it will help get around this issue. Some people have relatively advanced requirements in terms of the technology, and they will need the latest and best solutions. Others could be using it purely as an email client. And for that, in many cases, it’s quite sufficient to buy a refurbished and high quality 2-3 year old PC, that can be easily used for another three years.
There has to be a mind shift in the public sector. Purchasing needs to make circular part of the solution – it’s obvious it cannot work for everything – but just making a little more effort to see where it can usefully fit in will mean they are taking a big step towards cost efficiency and preserving resources – because in the future those resources are not going to be there.
