All Shifts Workforce Technology
Resume:
June ****
Reducing
Your Workforce’s
E-waste
Contributions
Taking action for the environment has
never been more important for businesses.
Android Enterprise can help your business
accelerate its sustainability journey.
Contents
In brief 2
There’s never been a more important
time for business leaders to embrace
sustainability
4
The growing e-waste crisis & how
circularity can help
6
How Android Enterprise can help you
reduce e-waste with BYOD
10
How to get started 13
Sources 15
1
In brief
Business leaders are embracing sustainability with growing urgency. At the heart of this effort is an attempt to curb the growing crisis of electronic waste (e-waste). Business leaders can step up to the plate to tackle e-waste, starting with embedding circularity into workforce technology. For businesses that equip their workforce with corporate-liable mobile phones, one major way to reduce your e-waste contribution through circularity is to start with the basics and reduce the number of new devices your business invests in.
Android Enterprise can offer businesses an opportunity to reduce their e-waste contributions with a simple change to workforce technology investments. In just 1 year of employees using their existing mobile phones for personal and work purposes under a BYOD deployment strategy, businesses can achieve cost savings of up to 92% as well as reduce e-waste, emissions, and energy use.10 Read on to learn more about the mounting sustainability challenges that businesses face, and how Android Enterprise can help your business limit e-waste, reduce your carbon footprint, and drive cost savings. 2
This report was developed with Accenture’s
support and 50+ primary and secondary sources
to explore critical themes in sustainability that are increasingly at the heart of business decisions.
3
There’s never been a
more important time for
business leaders to
embrace sustainability
4
There’s never been a more important time for
business leaders to embrace sustainability
Sustainability is at the top of business leaders’ agendas - and it should be.
“Solving climate change is humanity’s next big moonshot”1
- Google CEO, Sundar Pichai, 2021
At Android Enterprise, we want to make it easy to be more sustainable. That’s why we build technology to help people and businesses better understand their impact and actions. Heightened urgency from environmental challenges and increasing regulations are driving leaders to redefine business models with a new lens toward sustainability. According to research done by the United Nations in partnership with Accenture, 63% of business leaders are launching new product and service offerings aimed at driving sustainability.2 Embedding sustainability into business models doesn’t just drive environmental benefits - it’s also been shown to impact the bottom line. Sustainable businesses perform better financially, with the EBITDA margin of top quartile companies reporting 21% higher (+3.4 percentage points) than the bottom quartile.3
This emphasis on sustainability has led more than a third of global business leaders to commit to net zero targets by 2050. However, despite articulating plans to shift to more sustainable business models and practices, leaders are still struggling when it comes to translating commitments into action. In fact, 93% of leaders are facing significant barriers when it comes to implementing sustainable changes.2 These barriers often arise from businesses’ connection to their broader supply chain and ecosystem. In a survey of 1,000+ leading CEOs, “extending strategy throughout the supply chain”, or ensuring that partners and ecosystem players have the same sustainability mindset, was the #1 barrier for CEOs of enterprises with revenue higher than $25M.4 However, supply chain and partner struggles don’t have to keep your business from meeting sustainability goals. While you may not have control over the actions of your ecosystem partners, you can choose to engage with companies that match your business’s dedication to sustainability. And there’s no better time to start than now. This paper will help you make progress on your sustainability journey by outlining both the environmental benefits and cost savings that can be achieved by using work profile on personal Android devices.
5
The growing
e-waste crisis &
how circularity
can help
6
The growing e-waste
crisis & how circularity
can help
One of the easiest ways to get started with
sustainability is to evaluate, and mitigate, your
business’s contribution to the growing e-waste
crisis. The scale of the global e-waste crisis is
staggering, with 61.3 Million Tons (Mt) of e-waste projected to be discarded by the end of 2023. If no action is taken, e-waste is projected to rise 22% to 74.7 Mt by 2030, making it the world's
fastest-growing waste stream.5
What is e-waste? E-waste refers to old, end-of-life or prematurely discarded electrical and electronic equipment that is not recycled, reused, or
repurposed. It can encompass anything from
broken refrigerators that end up in a landfill to
prematurely discarded mobile phones, thrown out
with household waste to make room for the latest
model. By weight, mobile phones account for up to
nearly 10% (4.7 Mt) of global e-waste. And this is no small number. Globally, 5.3B mobile phones
failed to be discarded through proper recycling
protocols in 2022. And many of these devices
didn’t need to become e-waste in the first place;
every year, devices are prematurely thrown away
that could have otherwise remained in use if
software updates were supported or repair was
readily available.5,6
DID YOU KNOW?
The projected amount of
e-waste generated in 2023
(61.3 Million Tons) is equivalent
to the weight of
168 Empire
State buildings.5
DID YOU KNOW?
Laid end-to-end, the 5.3B
mobile phones thrown
away in 2022 would circle
the earth more than
15 times.6
7
E-waste Generated Globally (Mt) - Global E-waste Monitor, 20192 E-waste generation is
predicted to grow by
+22%
by 2030 (74.7 Mt)
Figure 1: E-waste generated globally since 2019
Overconsumption, inadequate disposal infrastructure, and lax enforcement are all drivers of the escalating problem of e-waste. In the US, the average number of devices per household surged to 25 in 2021, up nearly 130% from just 11 devices in 2019. Despite global e-waste regulations covering 71% of the world's population, only 17.4% of would-be e-waste was properly recycled worldwide in 2019. Through the responsible management of enterprise devices, businesses can play their part in increasing the percentage of e-waste recycled and taking other steps to mitigate the crisis.5,7 DID YOU KNOW?
Around 20%
of e-waste from high-income countries (e.g., the US) is exported to low-income countries in regions such as Africa and Southeast Asia, where over 90%
of it is informally processed through dangerous methods such as open-dumping, burning, leaching, and melting, posing a grave environmental and health concern.5
8
As the problem grows, one thing is clear:
circularity will be one of the most critical
tools in the battle against e-waste
Circularity is a full-scale mindset shift that requires a pivot from a linear ‘take-make-waste’ approach to a restorative process that reduces waste. Circularity is an economic model, regenerative by design, that aims to keep products and materials in the economy for as long as possible, maximizing their useful life while minimizing the extraction of new raw materials and the generation of waste. Put simply, instead of producing more and more stuff that is destined to end up in a landfill, circularity focuses on prioritizing products that are meant to last and keeping them in use as long as possible. Linear Economy Circular Economy
Figure 2: Circularity presents a fundamental shift in how organizations operate The benefits of circularity are multifold. From a purely environmental perspective, 80% of the annual volume of plastics in our oceans can be mitigated through circularity.11 It might be counterintuitive, but nearly a fifth of e-waste is plastic. Societally, the adoption of circular business models is projected to result in the development of 6M new jobs by 2030.11, 12 Finally, the economic benefits should not be ignored. Circularity presents a $4.5 trillion global opportunity by 2030 through models including sharing platforms, products-as-a-service, product life extension, circular supply chains, and recovery and recycling infrastructure. This amounts to an opportunity larger than the GDP of Germany, the 4th largest economy.8,9
9
How Android Enterprise
can help your business
reduce e-waste with BYOD
10
How BYOD helps you reduce e-waste
No matter where you are on your sustainability journey, Android Enterprise can make a difference. Leveraging work profile from Android Enterprise is a simple and easy-to-implement change that allows you to make progress toward sustainability goals without significant changes to company operations.
Reduce the number of new device purchases through BYOD deployments. With work profile, you can address e-waste before a new device is even purchased. Work profile can be set up on an Android device to separate work apps and data from personal apps and data, eliminating the need to purchase separate corporate-liable devices. With work profile, you can securely and privately use the same device for work and personal purposes—your organization manages your work apps and data while personal apps, data, and usage remain private. Using personal phones for work is a great way to reduce spend on an additional corporate-liable device (by up to 92% in Year 1 alone), but the benefits don’t end there. Limiting the purchase of secondary corporate-liable devices allows you to reduce your impact on the environment — and leveraging Android work profile is one way to enable secure personal devices for work.10 Additional Device Cost and Emissions Savings10
Note: Savings assume workforce requires a corporate liable device per employee and leverages an Android personal device.
# of Devices Not Purchased Cost Savings Emissions Savings
(kgCO2e)
Energy Use Savings
(kWh)
E-waste Savings
(lbs)
< 100 $800 - $83K 69 – 7K 2 – 200 0.5 – 45
101 – 500 $83K - $410K 7K – 35K 200 – 1K 45 – 225
501 - 1,000 $410K - $825K 35K – 70K 1K – 2K 225 – 450 1,001 – 25,000 $825K - $21M 70K – 2M 2K – 50K 450 – 11K 25,001 – 50,000 $21M – $42M 2M – 3.5M 50K – 100K 11K – 23K 50,001 – 75,000 $42M - $62M 3.5M – 5M 100K – 150K 23K – 34K 75,001 - 100,000 $62M - $83M 5M – 7M 150K – 200K 34K – 45K How we calculated the environmental and cost impact of BYOD10 Cost savings assume the given business’s workforce requires a corporate-liable mobile device per employee and will complete a full transition to managed work profile on employee personal devices running Android. Cost savings include an annual average mobile device management subscription cost of $74.10 and the average smartphone cost of $825.00 as provided by Esper and Daniel Research Group. Energy cost savings were calculated (dollars per kWh) from EnergySage and Global Petrol Prices. E-waste, emissions, and energy savings determination rely on the assumption that limiting the purchase of secondary, corporate-liable mobile devices also reduces the eventual disposal-related emissions, energy and e-waste from these devices. To determine the full lifecycle of mobile phone emissions, from manufacturing through end-of-use, data from The Atlantic and Reboxed was utilized. 11
What do these savings consist of?
When your business limits the purchase of secondary corporate-liable mobile devices, significant cost and environmental savings can be realized: Cost
Avoided purchase of new devices,
subscription cost savings
Emissions
Avoided emissions from production of
a new device, reduced emissions from
consolidation to one device
E-waste
Avoided e-waste from consolidation
to one device
Energy Use
Reduced energy use from consolidation
to one device
DID YOU KNOW?
Implementing BYOD management on personal phones across a workforce of 10,000 devices, rather than buying secondary corporate devices10:
● Avoids CO2 emissions from device production and use equivalent to 1.7M fossil fuel car miles
● Reduces e-waste weighing in at the same amount as nearly 4,500lbs
● Saves enough energy to power the average American household for nearly 2 years 12
How to
get started
13
How to get started
It’s important to act now to rethink your enterprise technology strategy in light of the growing e-waste crisis. And it doesn’t take a big leap – work profile from Android Enterprise allows you to make mindful changes to your workforce’s technology strategy that have a major impact. To get started with work profile today, you should be thinking through 4 main steps: 01
Evaluate your current enterprise tech stack
and opportunities to embed circularity in
your workforce’s technology
Determine how many devices you could avoid
purchasing with Android work profile.
02
Contact a trusted validated Mobile Device
Management provider to set up an initial
pilot program with Android Enterprise and
work profile
a. Identify and assess the partner for you.
b. Design and launch a program that manages all
your devices.
03
Determine socialization and change
management for your workforce
a. Quantify the environmental savings (e.g., energy, e-waste and emissions reductions) as you
implement work profile.
b. Develop a communication strategy and share
metrics with your workforce.
04
For enterprise technology investments you
do make, continue to prioritize mindful
hardware investments as well as think
ahead to device end-of-life
a. Considerations for circularity begin when
devices are initially purchased. For any
hardware purchases made for your workforce,
prioritize devices that are durable and easy to
repair to keep your hardware functioning for as
long as possible.
b. When devices reach their end of life due to
hardware constraints and require disposal,
ensure your enterprise is taking the steps to
encourage the proper disposal of, recycling and
reuse of e-waste. E-waste cannot be disposed
of in regular waste bins, so a plan must be made
according to local protocols and regulations to
ensure toxic waste and hazardous byproducts
aren’t leached into the environment. For more
information on e-waste disposal and region-
specific resources, check out Google’s
recycling program and recycling resources by
region.
14
Sources
1. Google: Climate change is humanity’s next big moonshot, 2021 2. Accenture: UNGC-CEO Study, 2023
3. Accenture: Sustainability DNA Index, 2021
4. Accenture: UNGC-CEO Study, 2021
5. UNITAR: Global E-waste Monitor, 2019
6. BBC: E-waste - Five billion phones to be thrown away in 2022, 2022 7. Daniel Research Group: United States Personal Device History and Forecast, 2023
8. World Resources Institute: 5 Opportunities of a Circular Economy, 2021 9. Accenture: Waste to Wealth - The Circular Economy Advantage, 2015 10. Cost savings are based on reductions in new device and energy spend from the eliminated need for separate corporate-liable mobile devices, using average smartphone cost from Daniel Research Group and global energy costs (price per kWh) from Global Petrol Prices. E-waste, emissions, and energy savings draw from the assumption that workforces who both leverage Android personal devices and necessitate separate corporate-liable devices can experience E-waste, emissions, and energy savings by avoiding the purchase and eventual disposal of secondary, corporate-liable devices. To determine the full lifecycle of mobile phone emissions, from manufacturing through end-of-use, data from The Atlantic and Reboxed was utilized. 11. Ellen MacArthur Foundation: Designing out plastic, 2021 12. ScienceDaily: Scientists give new lease of life to e-waste plastics, 2021 15
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