UN Sustainability Goals

UN Sustainability Goal No. 12

Sustainable Consumption 

One of the greatest global challenges is to integrate environmental sustainability with economic growth and welfare by decoupling environmental degradation from economic growth and doing more with less. Resource decoupling and impact decoupling are needed to promote sustainable consumption and production patterns and to make the transition towards a greener and more socially inclusive global economy.

To ensure sustainable consumption and production practices necessarily entails to respect the biophysical boundaries of the planet and to reduce current global consumption rates in order to fit with the biophysical capacity to produce ecosystem services and benefits.

UNEA 4. Resolution 1 (UNEP/EA.4/Res.1 ) specifies that a circular economy is one of the current sustainable economic models, in which products and materials are designed in such a way that they can be reused, remanufactured, recycled or recovered and thus maintained in the economy for as long as possible, along with the resources of which they are made, and the generation of waste, especially hazardous waste, is avoided or minimized, and greenhouse gas emissions are prevented or reduced.

UNEP's Economy Division has a project on Global Opportunities for Sustainable Development Goals (GO for SDGs) which aims to strengthen the capacity of countries to achieve SDG 12.

SDG 12 on Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP) and UNEP's implementation of SCP and circular economy are fully aligned.  Currently, UNEP is developing an SDG 12 Hub which will provide visualization and coordination across SDG 12. This links to UNEP's OnePlanet Initiative for Sustainable Consumption and Production. The OnePlanet Initiative and the SDGs are fully aligned in terms of the monitoring approach.  Additionally, the newly developed SCP Hotspots Analysis Tool (SCP-HAT) is an online application with data on the environmental and socio-economic performance of 171 countries over the last 25 years. It allows countries to quickly identify and analyse hotspots at country and sector level and provides key country information in the context of most relevant policy questions.

Certified Circular IT Products.

There are many products that you can use in your network to work towards a sustainable future and also drive down costs in your business. 
What areas might they typically be?

Spares - More often than not these devices sit on a shelf and might never be used. This is an excellent strategy to help drive down maintenance costs. Reduce your SLA and keep spares. 

Optics / Cables -  You can read up in more detail about these types of devices. In short, these are very rarely made by the OEM. The OEM have contracts in place to manufacture these and then add large mark up's. Here is ony key area you can dramatically reduce costs in projects and also help in circular economy by acquiring from the existing pool of hardware in the market. 

Any devices more than 2 years old - Any units that you are using in the network that is more than 2 years old may well be available in the circular market. Why pay for new hardware which in 3 years may well have to be replaced? Pre-owned units may offer the bridge you need for the next 3 years at very different costs. 

Click below to request a quote from our team on a product which might be available in the circular economy