Out of sight is not out of mind: The e-waste blind spot in government IT

“Out of sight is not necessarily out of mind.”

As governments accelerate cloud migration, AI adoption and large-scale digital transformation, the environmental footprint of public sector IT is not disappearing – it is becoming less visible. While the move away from on-premise infrastructure is often positioned as both efficient and sustainable, Gerry Hackett, director Global Circular Services at Computacenter, warns that responsibility does not end when hardware moves off-site.

“Moving to the cloud may be a good policy. But government still has to take account of what is happening with that product and the consumption of power,” he said. “They’re reliant on suppliers to provide accurate reporting — and that is a major issue.”

As infrastructure shifts beyond direct departmental control, public bodies become increasingly dependent on cloud providers for environmental and energy data. This creates a growing governance gap in sustainability reporting, particularly as AI-driven workloads increase demand for datacentre capacity, hardware and energy. In effect, digital transformation is intensifying the material and energy footprint of IT, not eliminating it.

Lighter devices, more complex waste

At the same time, the composition of public sector IT estates is changing. Large printers and desktop setups are giving way to lighter laptops, mobile devices and compact equipment. While this reduces overall material weight, it also makes recycling more complex.

“In broad terms, that means less weight and fewer easily recoverable precious metals,” explained Hackett. “And we still need better technologies to access those materials – recycling is relatively primitive in how we extract them.”

Smaller devices often contain high concentrations of critical materials in tightly integrated components that are harder to dismantle and recover. The result is a waste stream that may be lighter but is increasingly complex and resource-intensive to process.

The hidden impact of hybrid IT estates

Hybrid working has further expanded the challenge. Since the pandemic, many public sector organisations now operate a dual IT estate, with devices spread across offices and employees’ homes.

“There’s an issue around what people have at home now and how organisations deal with that,” said Hackett. “Government has got to start doing the basics: what equipment have you got, how are you tracking it, and what is happening with it across the entire lifecycle?”

Without strong oversight, devices can become unaccounted for, replaced prematurely or left unused for years. Hackett highlights that significant volumes of equipment effectively “go missing” over time, only being discovered when refresh cycles take place – by which point their financial and environmental value has diminished.

Visibility as the foundation of sustainability

For Hackett, sustainable IT begins with control – specifically, robust asset visibility across the full lifecycle of devices and infrastructure.

“You should commit to having an asset management database, so you know what you’ve bought, what you’ve spent on it, and the environmental data associated with it,” he said.

Tracking assets from procurement through deployment, repair, redeployment and end-of-life enables more informed decisions on reuse, resale and recycling. It also allows departments to produce meaningful sustainability reporting rather than relying on retrospective estimates or supplier-level assumptions.

Better visibility does more than support compliance. It opens up practical opportunities to extend device lifespans, reduce unnecessary procurement and generate value from remarketing usable equipment.

Procurement reform and the circular opportunity

Procurement remains one of the most underused levers for improving circularity in government IT. Fragmented purchasing across departments leads to duplication, inconsistent standards and missed opportunities to embed lifecycle thinking from the outset.

“There is a huge amount of duplication across government with different departments doing their own thing,” said Hackett. “Acquiring 5,000 laptops for one department is very similar to acquiring 5,000 for another. Consolidated contracts and standard circular frameworks would make a major difference.”

Embedding lifecycle considerations at the point of purchase – including maintenance, redeployment, refurbishment and recycling – helps surface hidden costs early and reduces long-term environmental impact. Hackett also points to international approaches, such as policies encouraging refurbished IT procurement, to drive both savings and carbon reduction.

Cutting through sustainability jargon

Despite increasing focus on circular IT, Hackett believes cultural barriers remain a key obstacle.

“There’s a lot of jargon in sustainability – remanufacture, refurbish, recycle – and the meanings get diluted,” he said. “But circular behaviour at heart is just good, common-sense management.”

That common sense includes using devices for longer, redeploying equipment across departments and remarketing surplus assets rather than defaulting to disposal. While such practices are routine in many private sector organisations, they are still underexploited in government due to structural silos and limited cross-department coordination. Good practice in this area also suffers from overzealous destruction of assets in the name of security.

Follow the money – and the carbon will follow

A central theme in Hackett’s argument is the need to align sustainability with financial incentives.

“If you don’t talk money, it all sounds well-meaning,” he said. “But the second you put incentives and savings into the conversation, behaviour changes.”

Effective lifecycle management can reduce procurement costs through reuse and refurbishment, generate revenue through remarketing and avoid unnecessary expenditure on new hardware. At the same time, extending product lifespans significantly cuts embedded carbon – often the largest contributor to a device’s overall footprint.

“There’s money left on the table in government estates,” said Hackett. “Through competent lifecycle management, you’re saving money, generating money and avoiding carbon.”

Demanding more from the supply chain

Hackett also urges public sector organisations to be more assertive with suppliers, particularly around recycling and material recovery data.

“Don’t hesitate to demand material mass balance reporting from recycling suppliers,” he said. “If you don’t ask, you don’t get.”

Modern IT devices can contain dozens of elements, including copper, aluminium, gold and palladium. Many of these materials are recoverable, but only if organisations require transparency on what is reclaimed and how it re-enters the supply chain. Without clear reporting, circular economy claims risk remaining superficial.

A practical path to circular public sector IT

Looking ahead, Hackett sees opportunities to strengthen domestic circular supply chains, particularly through improved material recovery and reuse. Extracting metals from end-of-life equipment and returning them to the manufacturing supply chain – potentially within the UK – would reduce reliance on virgin resources and support national circular economy goals.

For government leaders, the core message is pragmatic rather than ideological.

“Use things for longer, redeploy where you can, and make lifecycle thinking part of the furniture,” Hackett concludes. “It’s common sense – but it saves money, avoids carbon and creates a genuinely circular system.”