Green4Good helps organisations to manage the end-of-first-life IT assets and resell the used devices at competitive rates to the next user. The program ensures product life extension, reduces the need for manufacturing new equipment and generates verified carbon credits through technology resale and refurbishment.

CFI started Green4Good after years of seeing organisations’ lack of awareness about how to properly manage e-waste in an environmentally responsible way. Simultaneously, these organisations were also missing out on generating revenue from their redundant IT assets. CFI also wanted to help companies quantify the impact they make through the program. This brought about the Green4Good CarbonBank initiative, offering companies carbon credits for their end-of-first-life IT assets and the ability to offset new IT equipment purchases to become carbon neutral.

Problem

The majority of electronics’ lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions occur during manufacturing and the energy consumption of daily use. Businesses must constantly replace their devices that are designed to become obsolete after a few years’ use. Once obsolete and disposed of, 80 per cent of devices accumulate in landfills as toxic waste or contribute to the poor working conditions and rights of scrap labourers in developing societies.

Solution

The Green4Good program offers organisations a sustainable IT asset disposal service along with verified carbon credits. Through Green4Good, organisations can refurbish, resell or donate a large variety of technologies which can help them reach their sustainability targets. The received technology is securely processed and 90 per cent is reused and sold into secondary markets. Green4Good has its own marketplace for the technology it has refurbished. The remaining 10 per cent of technology that has no resale value is responsibly recycled through local partners so nothing ends up in landfills.

Green4Good enables a mind shift towards the circular economy in companies that would otherwise not believe that it is possible to find significant value from their used IT assets.

Environmental impact

To date, the Green4Good program has resold over 1.8 million end-of-first-life IT assets. Green4Good has averted over 500,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions and as a result developed a similar number of carbon credits which organisations can use towards their carbon reduction goals.

Social impact

Green4Good enables improved access to sustainable consumption choices by creating high-quality refurbished products at a significant discount. This model provides opportunities for people from diverse socio-economic backgrounds to access technology and enables everyone to contribute to the circular economy. Green4Good operates their entire value chain within North America to ensure all the processing takes place locally and safely, contributing to domestic employment rates. Green4Good supports communities by encouraging participating corporations to donate their technology resale revenue towards local charities and non-profits.