Net zero has changed our IT policies

Kainos has a Net Zero target of 2025. We have a climate action plan to achieve this with near-term targets verified by the Science-based Target initiative. And we are on track to achieve this within the next 18 months. To understand more, you can read our public Climate Reduction Plan.  

When it comes to sustainability, it's natural for organisations to focus on the energy they use, how green their offices are and the carbon emissions of their products. But what gets less focus is more sustainable IT. We think this needs to get more attention given the environmental footprint of IT globally. Let's take a few generalised examples:  

• One average laptop causes 331 kgCOe carbon emissions during manufacturing. Some laptops will of course use more or less (for example, a MacBook Air causes 147 kgCOe).  
• One laptop causes 190,000 litres of water to be used during manufacturing.  
• One laptop emits 75%-85% of its lifetime carbon emissions during manufacturing. The rest is transportation and use.  
• Desktop computers and servers typically cause more carbon emissions than laptops.  
• Monitors cause more carbon emissions during use than laptops.  
• Two monitors double the carbon emissions.  

We've quietly improved our internal IT policy over the past couple of years to contribute to our climate action goals. We wanted to share some of these changes. This is not to say we have made all the improvements we want to, there is plenty more to do.  

Extending the lifetime of devices 

Extending the lifespan of smartphones and other electronics by just one year would save the EU as much in the way of carbon emissions as taking 2 million cars off the roads annually. 

One of the most significant changes we can make as consumers is to extend the lifetime of the devices we purchase. So, we have extended the lifetime of Kainos devices from 3 years to 5 years. This will significantly reduce our demand for new devices by up to 40%. Given that we purchased 900 laptops, phones and monitors in the last twelve months, this avoids embodied carbon emissions from hundreds of new devices yearly. 

But devices sometimes break and fail. For those laptops out of warranty, we attempt to repair them. To be able to do the repair ourselves our IT team has created local repair teams. These teams reuse parts from other devices where possible for the repair. To simplify things we've consciously reduced the variety of devices we purchase to just one Windows laptop and one MacBook (we don't buy desktops). This makes it much easier to source reused parts for repair.  

Reducing device transportation  

Kainos is an FTSE250 company with 3,200 people across 23 locations. Kainos staff are spread globally with 33% based in Central Europe, North America, South America and Asia. Most staff prefer to work from home most of the week while some others are home workers who don't have an office location. This has complicated the logistics of the delivery of devices to staff.  

Our IT team re-designed our process to remove unnecessary transportation, commuting and carbon emissions. We now ship devices directly to staff at home from local suppliers, removing the need to ship first to our IT team. This has cut the distance our devices travelled in the last year by 230,000 miles and also reduced carrier costs. Corporate software is now automatically deployed on setup and pushed when changes are needed. 

Decommissioning old servers 

We had a small, local data centre in Belfast that housed many older servers, some dating from the 1990s. We calculated that it would be more efficient, require less management and reduce carbon emissions if we decommissioned these old servers. So our IT team retired 69 servers and migrated these to the cloud, reducing our carbon emissions by approximately 19.6 tonnes of CO2e per year (for use).  

Reusing and Recycling 

We have set a goal of zero waste electronic and electrical equipment (WEEE) to go to landfill. But there's often life left in devices after 5 years. We've partnered with IT recycling companies (VYTA and Greensafe) to opt to re-sell older devices with their Equipment Resale and Revenue Return programme. In FY22-23, this programme raised £18,550 from re-sales for charitable causes.  

This process is working well with 45% of devices being re-sold in FY 22-23. When devices cannot be re-sold our IT recycling partners securely recycle 100% of devices, ensuring nothing goes to landfill. 

We're proud of the impact these quiet IT policy changes have made and hope it inspires other organisations to do more.  To find out more about our sustainability goals visit our dedicated page.