This company is setting an example for all IT equipment suppliers

“What this means in practice: when a machine becomes obsolete, we take it back. We ensure it is not dumped in a landfill, nor allowed to pollute rivers or soil. We track it, refurbish it or responsibly recycle it. We close the loop. If your vendor won’t make that commitment, you’re still playing by the old rules of waste and irresponsibility,” says managing executive at Qrent, Kwirirai Rukowo.

“Consider this: organisations sign nice contracts, but their vendors walk away when the gear fails or becomes redundant. The client is left with liability or worse the hardware ends up in the wrong place. That is not sustainability. That is shifting cost and risk and adversely affecting the total cost of ownership. If you hold the vendor only for delivery you are playing into a broken model. We are telling our clients: challenge your vendors. Demand that they demonstrate EPR in action. Insist on lifecycle management: from acquisition through to decommission, return, reuse, recycling. If they cannot show adequate processes, metrics, certificates, chain-of-custody, then they are not your partner in sustainability. They are convenience suppliers,” the exec continues.

Rukowo is passionate about this topic, and rightly so.

The United Nations Institute for Training and Research’s Sustainable Cycles Programme reports that in 2022 alone, 62 million tonnes of ewaste was produced globally, an 82 percent increase over a 12-year period. By 2030, it is expected the world will generate 82 million tonnes of ewaste. And when ewaste isn’t properly disposed of it can leech dangerous chemicals into the Earth, potentially contaminating ground water supplies. Worse still, though is the fact that rare minerals used in the manufacture of today’s modern electronics cannot be retrieved and reused.

We need more folks like Rukowo then to champion efforts to give technology a second life, or at the very least, extract what we can from old or damaged electronics.

“Our position at Qrent is unambiguous. We accept obsolete equipment from our clients through our seamless information technology asset disposition program. We take responsibility for ensuring it does not end up in landfill or water. We refurbish where possible, we recycle where necessary. We document impact: how many kilos of e-waste prevented, how many device lives extended, how many critical raw materials spared extraction. We do the heavy lifting so our clients can report real progress rather than spin” says the executive.

While this is encouraging to see, we have to ask the question: what happens if Qrent fails?

Businesses shutter all the time and while a vendor may have every intention of collecting old gear for refurbishment or recycling, sometimes life gets in the way of that. We asked Rukowo how collection of ewaste would work in the unfortunate event that the business has to close. He assured us that even if it came to that, the caretakers of the brand be that a liquidator or administrator, would see to it that agreements are adhered to until every asset it has distributed has been collected.

Not that the executive has any intention of shuttering this business.

“Yes companies will close and disappear the same way people die. Have we ever stopped planning for the next year even if we do not know whether we will still be alive? All businesses operate on a going concern concept, and all our plans are based on us existing in perpetuity (at least for the legal persona).”

We truly admire what Rukowo and Qrent are doing. It’s simple, but incredibly important work. The company has a wide array of rental options available and if you business needs to rent some new equipment it may be worth getting in touch with the vendor via its website here