Data centres are projected to account for 20% of the global power supply by 2025, escalating the need for sustainability in this sector, according to industry experts Wisetek. The company is urging businesses to focus on this issue ahead of the Data Centres Ireland 2023 Conference.
Given the considerable environmental impact of data centres, sustainability has become crucial, especially in light of estimates that e-waste produced globally amounted to 59.4 million tonnes in 2022. Since data centre decommissioning significantly contributes to this e-waste, it is imperative for businesses to handle their e-waste responsibly.
Donal Gibson, Head of International Sales at Wisetek, comments: “The backbone of our flourishing digital economy is the data centre. Modern data centres consume about one per cent of total electricity consumption worldwide, or 205 terawatt-hours. Reducing this figure will require greater efforts in data centre resource management.”
Wisetek offers a suite of data centre services including migration, decommissioning, data destruction, and erasure, amongst others. They enable businesses to manage their data centres safely and responsibly through their lifecycle. The firm's expertise in data sanitisation and IT asset disposition facilitates the recycling and reusing of IT assets, minimising e-waste generation.
Speaking on the panel ‘The Growing Circular Economy Within Data Centres’ at the conference, Global Accounts Director at Wisetek, Gary McCarthy, said “As data centres evolve, their commitment to the circular economy shapes not just their efficiency but our collective responsibility for a greener future.
"Wisetek are incredibly proud to be a part of this initiative and to help grow sustainability in the industry," he says.
Gibson added that the company's decommissioning services involve comprehensive reporting, including certificates of data destruction and inventory reporting, whilst aiming to reduce e-waste through recycling and reusing IT assets where possible. This only underscores the importance of sustainability as demand for data centres continues to grow, he says.
Besides data sanitisation and hardware lifecycle management for data centres, Wisetek provides solutions for handling large data volumes securely. As Gibson observed, this only demonstrates the company’s continuous innovation in the OEM industry.
Wisetek’s data centre services range from a comprehensive on-site customer audit, IT relocation service encapsulating packaging, to a detailed IT asset audit. These services ensure clients’ data remains secure while decommissioning comes with decabling, deracking and the documentation and logging of assets.
The company also adheres to the highest global environmental regulatory recycling standards via its Sustainable EARTH Program, which ensures transparent, secure, and auditable processing. Gibson noted, “Our aim with the Wisetek Sustainable EARTH Program is to deliver the assurance that all our operations are conducted transparently, securely, and in a way that can be audited, while also ensuring strict compliance with the highest environmental recycling standards across the globe.”