Most days I think about data pipelines, infrastructure and delivery speed — not trash bags. But in 2025, you can’t separate IT from waste anymore, especially when you look at the numbers.
The Global E-waste Monitor 2024 estimates that the world generated 62 million tonnes of e-waste in 2022, up 82% since 2010, and we’re on track to hit 82 million tonnes by 2030, while only about 22% is formally collected and recycled.
At the same time, Circle Economy’s latest analysis shows that only 6.9% of all materials used globally come from recycled sources, and that share has actually been falling.
If you’re a CIO, CTO or IT director, a non-trivial chunk of that problem sits directly under your responsibility: laptops, phones, servers, network equipment, peripherals, cloud usage patterns, plus the data that describes all of it.
This is why I believe corporate recycling is no longer a “facilities” topic. It’s an IT governance topic, an ESG topic, and frankly a competitiveness topic.
Below I’ll walk through the key questions TechTarget asked — from why IT should be involved to how we’re planning to implement this at Pynest.
Why IT Leaders Should Be Directly Involved in Recycling Initiatives
There are three very practical reasons why CIOs and CTOs need to be in the core team — not just “support” — for any serious recycling initiative.
1. IT owns the asset lifecycle
Every device passes through IT at least twice: procurement and retirement.
Refresh cycles, vendor selection, leasing vs buying, redeployment policies — all of this decides whether a laptop:
- Gets a second life internally;
- Goes to a refurbisher or donation program;
- Or quietly becomes hazardous e-waste.
IT asset management is already a structured process in most enterprises. Extending that into a circular IT mindset (repair, reuse, certified recycling) is a logical next step, not a separate project. Analysts and CIO reports now talk explicitly about “circular IT as a strategic imperative,” not a side benefit.
2. IT already runs the data stack
Modern recycling is data-heavy:
- Tonnage by waste stream and location
- E-waste volumes by device type
- Vendor performance and diversion rates
- Scope 2 and 3 emissions link-backs
That data lives across facilities, procurement, HR, ESG tools, and external providers. Integrating it into a single, reliable model is exactly what IT is good at.
3. Sustainability is now part of IT performance
The role of sustainability leaders has shifted from narrow reporting to board-level strategy, and IT is central to how they execute. :contentReference[oaicite:3]{index=3}
As Ivonne Bojoh, CEO at Circle Economy, puts it, even perfect recycling on its own won’t fix the “triple planetary crisis” — we need systemic change around how we design, use and retire products.
IT leaders are in a unique position to turn that systemic conversation into hard architecture choices: device strategy, cloud strategy, data strategy.
How Recycling Ties Into ESG, Compliance and Digital Transformation
For most enterprises, recycling sits at the intersection of three big themes:
1. ESG reporting and compliance
Under frameworks like CSRD, GRI or ISSB, companies are expected to report resource use, waste and circularity with the same discipline they apply to financials.
That means:
- Audit-ready data on waste streams and e-waste
- Proven chain-of-custody for devices (especially with sensitive data)
- Evidence that suppliers and recyclers follow environmental and social standards
This is very much a data-model and integration problem — which is why IT needs a seat at the table from day one.
2. Digital transformation
Once you start treating recycling as a data product, it naturally becomes part of digital transformation:
- Smart bins and sensors produce time-series data
- Hauler and recycler portals expose APIs and machine-readable reports
- Cloud analytics turn those streams into dashboards and alerts
The smart waste management market itself is growing fast — some reports estimate it at around $2.2–3.3B in 2023, projected to reach $8–11B by 2032.
So this is not just an environmental topic; it’s a genuine technology category.
3. Circular economy and risk
The circular economy is increasingly framed as a multi-trillion-dollar business opportunity, not a cost centre.
Derek Mak, Founder & CEO of 99Bridges, summarises it neatly: the circular economy is “a multi-trillion-dollar market by 2030 and growing rapidly,” which means there is room for many innovators.
If you run IT and ignore this, you’re not just missing a sustainability checkbox — you’re potentially behind on where your industry is going.
What a Modern Waste Audit Looks Like (and Why IT Should Care)
Classic waste audits were manual: people in gloves, bags on tarps, and spreadsheets.
That’s still a useful starting point, but a modern waste audit usually combines:
- Manual sampling and sorting (to understand composition)
- Digital capture of results (app or tablet, standard schema)
- Integration into a central analytics platform
Sustainability & diversion experts like Kerstin Mayer, who works with Busch Systems, emphasise that regular waste audits help organisations “identify opportunities for improvement, reduce waste, and enhance sustainability.”
From an IT architecture perspective, a modern audit typically includes:
- A standard taxonomy of waste streams across sites
- APIs or data exports from haulers and recyclers
- Optional IoT sensors on high-volume bins (fill level, weight, temperature)
- A single dashboard where sustainability, facilities and IT see the same numbers
In other words: it looks like any other data integration project — with the difference that your “events” are movements of material, not user clicks.
Setting Recycling Goals and Aligning Them With Corporate KPIs
You can’t just say “we’ll recycle more” and call it strategy. Goals need to connect to the metrics your board already understands.
Typical patterns I see in mature programmes:
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Environmental goals
- “Achieve 90–95% certified recycling for IT hardware by 2028.”
- “Reach 70% total waste diversion from landfill across core campuses.”
-
Financial goals
- “Reduce waste disposal costs per FTE by 20% in three years.”
- “Cut new device spend by 15% through redeployment and extended lifecycle.” :contentReference[oaicite:10]{index=10}
-
Risk and compliance goals
- “100% of retired devices processed through certified partners with verifiable data destruction.”
- “Full audit trail for e-waste export / handling to reduce regulatory exposure.”
For IT leaders, it helps to phrase goals in familiar language:
- SLAs around asset redeployment time
- Error budgets for missing or untracked devices
- Coverage metrics for certified e-waste handling
This is how recycling becomes part of normal IT governance, not an exotic side project.
Tools and Platforms to Digitise and Automate Recycling
You can easily drown in tools here. My rule of thumb: use as few platforms as possible, but cover the full lifecycle.
1. ITAM and lifecycle tools
These are your source of truth for IT assets:
- Every device has an ID, owner, location, and lifecycle status
- Decommission steps include secure wipe, physical handling, and disposition (reuse / resale / donation / recycling / destruction)
When you connect this to recycling partners, you can show exactly how many devices took each path.
2. Smart waste management systems
These platforms handle:
- Bin- and site-level data
- Pickup optimisation and route planning
- Contamination alerts and trend analysis
The rapid growth of the smart waste management market shows how fast this space is professionalising.
3. ESG and reporting platforms
These tools:
- Map your waste, emissions and resource data to frameworks like CSRD/GRI/ISSB
- Provide workflow for approvals and audit trails
- Generate investor-ready reports and regulator-ready disclosures
4. Security and compliance tooling
For IT, one part is non-negotiable: secure device retirement.
You need:
- Certified wiping tools and processes
- Chain-of-custody logs and certificates of destruction
- Integration with vendors’ take-back programmes (e.g., device makers who refurbish and recycle returned hardware)
This is where large vendors like HP, Dell and others have built robust “take-back + refurbish + recycle” programmes that CIOs can plug into rather than reinvent from scratch.
How Big Companies Are Already Handling IT-Driven Recycling
A few patterns from large enterprises and infrastructure players:
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Device makers use take-back and circular programmes
- HP, for example, promotes device return for restoration, reuse or responsible recycling, tying it directly to lower environmental impact.
-
Tech giants integrate circularity into IT strategy
- Google’s Chief Sustainability Officer Kate Brandt has talked for years about treating hardware, data centres and operations through a circular economy lens — designing for reuse and recycling by default.
-
Recycling and waste leaders invest heavily in technology
- WM’s Chief Sustainability Officer, Tara Hemmer, frames investments in sorting and recycling technology as central to the company’s long-term strategy — not just compliance.
-
Circular tech startups show what’s possible
- Platforms like 99Bridges, led by Derek Mak, use software, AI and tracking to manage reusable packaging at scale for large retailers and cities, proving that digitally managed circular systems can handle enterprise-class volumes.
The common thread: IT is not just a back-office enabler; it’s at the centre of how recycling and circularity actually work.
Engaging Employees: From Poster Campaigns to Data-Driven Gamification
Even the best tools fail if people act as if nothing changed. Here, IT can again play an enabling role.
Effective programmes usually combine:
Clear internal communications
Simple, repeated messages about what goes where, why it matters, and what happens to the material afterwards — ideally endorsed by leadership, not just facilities.Gamification
Studies on gamification and sustainability show that points, badges, team challenges and real-time feedback can significantly increase participation in recycling programmes and pro-environmental behaviour at work.
In practice, that might mean:
- Team-level leaderboards for contamination rates or diversion
- Challenges between offices (“which site can cut landfill waste by 15% first?”)
- Rewards that link back to ESG commitments (donations, volunteering days, etc.)
- Data visualisation in the flow of work
IT can push live dashboards into:
- Office screens and digital signage
- Slack/Teams channels
- Intranet widgets next to operational KPIs
When developers see “bin contamination down 40% this quarter” next to deployment metrics, recycling stops being an abstract CSR statement.
Metrics, KPIs and Making Recycling Data Audit-Ready
To answer TechTarget’s question about metrics: here’s what I’d consider “table stakes” for a serious programme.
Core waste metrics:
- Total waste and recycling by stream, by site, per FTE
- Diversion rate (% of waste kept out of landfill/incineration)
- Contamination rates for key streams (e.g., recycling, organics)
IT-specific metrics:
- Number and % of IT assets:
- Redeployed internally
- Refurbished / resold / donated
- Recycled via certified partners
- Destroyed (with justification and certificate)
- Average device lifetime by category
- Scope 2/3 emissions linked to IT hardware lifecycle where possible
Data quality and auditability:
- Each record has a source (sensor, vendor report, ITAM export, manual audit)
- Periods (months, quarters) are closed and immutable once reported
- Data is mapped to the right ESG tags and stored with proper access control
If you do this well, external assurance for ESG reports becomes much less painful — because your waste data behaves like proper operational data, not a side spreadsheet.
How We Plan to Implement This at Pynest
At Pynest we build data and software systems for clients in fintech, healthcare, e-learning and other regulated industries. Our own physical footprint is relatively small, but our IT asset footprint and data capabilities are large — which means we should practice what we preach.
Here’s how we’re structuring our own corporate recycling initiative from the IT side.
1. Start with e-waste and device lifecycle
We’re treating every device as part of a circular asset pool:
- Extending lifetimes where it makes sense (RAM/SSD upgrades, not automatic refresh)
- Making redeployment-first the default before buying new hardware
- Partnering only with certified refurbishers and recyclers, and pushing them for machine-readable certificates and reports, not PDFs
2. Build a waste and circularity data model
We’re integrating:
- Our ITAM data (devices, owners, lifecycle)
- Vendor and recycler outputs (take-back reports, certificates of destruction)
- Basic office waste data (recycling, landfill, organics)
into a small internal “circularity” data mart. The goal is to see:
- Per-employee device footprint
- Reuse / redeployment rate
- E-waste flows by partner and geography
in the same dashboards as energy and cloud usage over time.
3. Turn internal patterns into client-ready architectures
Many of our clients now ask how to make waste and ESG data reliable, auditable and useful.
So we plan to turn our own experience into:
- Reference data models for waste streams and IT lifecycle
- Standard ingestion patterns for IoT sensors and vendor APIs
- Reusable ESG dashboard templates that combine waste, energy and IT metrics
The idea is simple: if we can do this in our own modest offices, we can scale the pattern to large campuses and multi-site enterprises.
4. Tie recycling data back into IT decision-making
Finally, we don’t want recycling to live only in an ESG slide deck.
We’re planning to connect our circularity metrics back into:
- Procurement (preferred vendors with strong circularity and take-back programmes)
- Risk registers (data destruction, e-waste export risks)
- Client RFP responses (demonstrating that our own IT operations follow the same principles we recommend)
If we do our job right, recycling and circularity will show up not as a separate initiative, but as another dimension of how we design and operate systems.
Closing Thought
Corporate recycling used to mean “buy more blue bins.”
Now it’s about how we design and run the entire digital infrastructure of a company — from device strategy and IT contracts to data models and analytics.
IT leaders are already responsible for the systems that create and track waste.
The next step is to use the same engineering mindset to reduce it, prove it, and turn circularity into a normal part of IT architecture — not an afterthought.
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