Elaine and Ross hate recycling. Both know first hand about our computers’ and smartphones’ life. About the wasted opportunities to better use the precious resources into it. Elaine Brown is the CEO of the Edinburgh Remakery who refurbished 295 laptops last year. She’s also a keen expert on the right to repair issues. Ross Cockburn is the Trustee of Reusing IT who has been dealing with repaired devices from Africa to Ukraine over the last 25 years. 

Gael Duez sat down with them to cover multiple topics such as: 

❤️ Subscribe, follow, like, ... stay connected the way you want to never miss an episode, twice a month, on Tuesday!

📧 Once a month, you get carefully curated news on digital sustainability packed with exclusive Green IO contents, subscribe to the Green IO newsletter here. 

📣 Green IO next Conference is in London on September 23rd and 24th. Every Green IO listener can get a free ticket using the voucher GREENIOVIP. A small gift for your huge support. 🎁 

📧 You can also send us an email at contact@greenio.tech to share your feedback and suggest future guests or topics.   

ROSS COCKBURN (00:01)

Recently the game changer for everybody in Elaine and I's world has been solid state drives. You can take a solid state hard drive and we have done this already, a Core 2 machine which is 20 years old and that machine will perform as quickly as a lot of people's brand new laptop.

Gaël Duez (00:21)

Hello everyone. Welcome to Green IO. I'm Gael Duez and in this podcast, we empower responsible technologists to build a greener digital world, one bite at a time. Twice a month on a Tuesday, guests from across the globe share insights, tools and alternative approaches, enabling people within the tech sector and beyond to boost digital sustainability.

Today, I'm going to share with you one of my secret recipes. When I deliver a keynote or talk about the environment of footprint of tech, I often ask the audience if they have a smartphone. They tend to laugh. I'm not sure why. Then I ask them to take it and to guess its weight. After a few seconds of auction style interaction, I deliver the right weight, which is around 70 kilo, because to build a smartphone, need around 15 kilos of fossil and 55 kilos of minerals. And this doesn't take into account the tons of water needed to extract the components and manufacture the device. And this doesn't take into account all the greenhouse gas emitted during its life cycle or the pollution emitted, including during its end of life phase, better known as e-waste. These numbers are the reasons why our guests today hate recycling. They know firsthand about our computers and smartphones life. The wasted opportunities to better use the precious resources Elaine Brown is the CEO of the Edinburgh Remakery who refurbished 295 laptops last year. She's also a keen expert on the right to repair issues. Ross Cockburn is a trustee of Reducing IT who has been dealing with repaired devices from Africa to Ukraine over the last 25 years. So welcome to the show, both of you. It's a pleasure to keep on exploring the rich and vibrant

Elaine Brown (02:12)

Thanks.

Gaël Duez (02:23)

British ecosystem of IT sustainability. I didn't say English because both of you, you're based in Scotland. Welcome to the show.

Elaine Brown (02:31)

Thanks, lovely to be here.

Gaël Duez (02:33)

My pleasure as well. And bonjour. If we go for French, guess quite a lot of the listeners will be a bit lost, but thanks for making the effort, Ross.

ROSS COCKBURN (02:41)

Well, good.

Gaël Duez (02:43)

You know that Green IO London is actually in one week. And the topic this year is good for business, good for the planet with a question mark because we will discuss this assumption. And when we were preparing the episode, actually something struck me, it is possible to save money while doing cleverly decommissioning of IT devices, because more and more it costs money. So it could be the case of good for business, good for repairing IT devices.

ROSS COCKBURN (03:14)

Clearly if you've got devices running your business and they are five years old and you're going to replace them but you give them six years then that's going to go for your business isn't it? It's going to be good for the bottom line. You're going to save money. So there's two sides to this good for business, know, good for the planet. There's profit making and there's saving money and the two quite often don't sit very well together. They're uneasy bedfellows as we would say because you'll have accountants saying we need more sales and then you'll have accountants saying well actually we need to reduce some of the cost here in the business because if you reduce the cost effectively if you half the cost you double the profits

Elaine Brown (04:05)

I think it's a no brainer. Of course, being sustainable with your tech is good for business and good for planet. And that is the basis of what the Edinburgh Remake is based on. It's really driving those businesses to understand that the tech that they have, they have to have it. We understand that it's a digital age. But what they can do is the end of life of their tech and their journey in that business is not the end of life for that tech. And that's where businesses sometimes have that mismatch. think, we don't want it, we don't value it, you know, and we'll just buy some new. But what they can do is in that buying new stuff, they can think about what they are discarding. And if they donate it to the remake, we… are sort of Scotland's leading social ITADs, But different to other ITADs is that the key is on the social layer because it's the ESG is. Donate your end of tech, you don't want it, but there are millions of other people for whom that tech has still got life and we can do amazing things with it and it's that ESG piece. And for us, it's created our business. So it is good for business for us because it's created green jobs and it's great for the planet because it's tackling that e-waste, but it's also doing something magical around the social. It's about giving that gift of connectivity to other people. And for the businesses themselves that are donating the tech, it's good for their business for them because their consumers more and more are demanding that they become more sustainable. That's important to them. So if they can demonstrate that they're doing that, that's great for their bottom line because they're going to get more consumers, more customers choosing their service rather than another company because they know that they've got sustainability at heart. So for me, your title of your conference coming up in London is spot on. It is good for business and it's good for the planet for our communities.

Gaël Duez (05:57)

That's an interesting feedback, Elaine. There is just something that I'd like to clarify. Obviously, if you're a B2C company or if your enterprise customers pay a lot of attention to sustainability, yes, there is a clear benefit of running a more more sustainable business and letting people know about it. But a lot of companies are not under this kind of pressure, let's be honest. Most of the economic world is about B2B exchanges and the pressure about sustainability is not that high. Still, I guess you can save money because, and this is where I would love some clarification from both of you, it costs money actually to dispose a company e-waste. Am I right? At least in Scotland or maybe in the entire UK, I don't know.

Elaine Brown (06:43)

Yes. Yes, some ITADs will do it for free, but then they'll add on costs. And it does cost them because they've got to make sure that they're complying with environment legislation. So waste transfer notices and data wipe costs money. And that's often why businesses are reticent to do anything. They'd rather just stuff things in cupboards and deal about it later because they are worried about the environmental legislation that they need to comply with when they give it away and also the cost. And so that often makes them inactive. Those two things seem insurmountable. So let's just forget about it. And I'm sure most businesses have got those cupboards of doom, as I call them, where they're just stuffing old stuff in their cables, whatever, to deal with it another day. But the day is now.

ROSS COCKBURN (07:38)

Thank you

Elaine Brown (07:39)

And we've got to deal with it now.

ROSS COCKBURN (07:42)

You have to realize now that the whole ITAD is an industry, it's a business. The big guys, in the larger users, the NHS, are my biggest donor. They're a huge user. They have 19,000 in Edinburgh devices alone, of which we get one fifth of every year being replaced.

Elaine Brown (07:46)

Yes.

ROSS COCKBURN (08:06)

Now for me as a sustainability activist trying to give people digital inclusion, that is fantastic. They're doing what I would say is best practice in the sense that they're making sure that anything that they are discarding is no longer of any purpose to them. It's going to get a longer happier life helping me educate children in Africa, Ukraine or wherever, or supporting charities in Scotland with low cost tech. So they've tipped that box massively. The alternative would be for those devices to be dismantled. Some of the recycling companies or the ITAS don't even dismantle them. They shred them. The money and the amount of electricity and probably water involved in shredding e-waste, turning it into granules that they can then be either hydro or pyrometallurgically all the minerals are extracted it must be massive absolutely huge I'd love to give you a number right now but I can't.

Elaine Brown (09:12)

Seen it firsthand, just having visited an ITAD and a lot of the companies that demand that these ITADs shred it is because they're pitching it on security. We want the whole thing shredded because then our data cannot be shared anywhere. That is rubbish and that is an absolute disgrace. So to me, that should just be stopped because there is ways to wipe data without shredding the entire machine.

ROSS COCKBURN (09:22)

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. ⁓ It is. Again. It's a debacle basically and then you've got the leading leading company that provides Wiping solutions Blanco, I don't mind naming them because they've bought up all the other wiping software companies out there and They actually say that you know Maybe maybe their own software isn't the right thing to use if they put the seed of doubt, but they say that. All other software is not good enough. You need to use Blanco. And you get people just project fear. It was the reason that we are no longer in the EU. It's the reason that we voted to leave. It's that we spin fear into society. And then people make rash decisions based on so most businesses feel that it's not possible to wipe drives. It is certainly more costly as Elaine said because a, Blanco will not give you their software for nothing, you pay for a wipe and it takes time because you have to take the drives out, you have to load them up so the labour cost in doing the right thing is a lot greater than doing the wrong thing and therefore most organisations will do the wrong thing purely and simply because of the economics.

Gaël Duez (11:00)

Okay, so let me pose here. So first of all, ITAD, can you just explain the acronym?

ROSS COCKBURN (11:06)

You're late.

Elaine Brown (11:06)

It's IT asset disposition. So it's basically tech disposal service. So these ITADs will come into big companies and say, you know, we'll take back all your least items, we'll take back all your end of life items, and we'll deal with that. And we might charge a little bit, but it's a problem solved for you. And then these ITADs often then sell those items. And then they will give the company sometimes a proportion back of that sale and then the business feels like we've done our bit, you know, but they don't know the journey of that tech, they just are feeling like, well, we've done our bit, we've got rid of our tech, we can now, and we've got some money back, so we can now buy in more tech, and they don't want to know the story. And I think that they need to know the story and they need to understand the story and it needs to be a better story if they understood that, would be a no-brainer for them to use people like ourselves who are transparent with the story. We're not shredding, we're doing community. We don't use the word recycling in the remake array. It's all about repair and reuse. is the key thing. So these ITADs are massive. They are massive. And about money. They're about money on the proportion that they're saying that they're doing the right thing, but Ross and I would probably say that, are they really? But it's a business. It's a business that's been born out of the need for people to get rid of their tech, to bring in more tech. That's where it comes from.

Gaël Duez (12:34)

Is it a business that actually save money for end user company or cost money? I've got a bit of a understanding because do they have to pay ITAD to take care of the tech or do they actually get some money back from ITAD once the tech has been resold?

Elaine Brown (12:41)

So it's a bit of a mixture. Most will say, we'll do this for free and we will get your proportion back because it's like a 70-30 split and so they'll give some money back to the provider. But sometimes for certain items, so some items will be free, they'll do that service for free and then they'll give money back. So it seems like brilliant. But then there'll be bits where they will charge for additional services. So it's all about where they can see where they can get money from those companies. So it's a bit of a mixture, you know, but the key thing is that the business that's donating thinks, we'll get some money back, but there'll be some costs along the line as well.

ROSS COCKBURN (13:33)

Having been the IT manager of a huge electronics company, and the start of my journey into this world came from being on the other side of the fence. I was tasked with getting rid of 500 computers that were in a high-based storage area for finished product. So the finished product that our company manufactured had to go into this storage area. At the price moment in time that I was taken through to that storage area, I was told… We need all this space. Get rid of all these computers. And the business was not really, they didn't care. They were just like, we just need the space. You just get rid of the things and let me know when I can use the space for a finished product. The only thing I would say most companies are really, well, they have to by law, they have to make sure that they just don't dump it in the ground. It can't go into landfill. So that is the bottom line. That's the baseline. And that's why SIPA, the Environmental Protection Agency in Scotland are a very important organization and you can get yourself into a lot of bother if you breach their rules and regulations. So both Elaine and I will be SIPA registered because we're handling this material, we're moving it around, we're transferring waste. We sometimes hate calling it waste because to us it's precious new computers for young mums children who are digitally excluded. I think the bottom line is that most companies will just be thinking not to landfill, get it out of here quickly because we need the space. We can't put new computers on the desk while the old ones are there. So it's move quick and get it out. I know Elaine said that there'd be lots of cupboards, but I would say most of the big guys, they just move very quickly. They subcontract companies to come in, 10 engineers come in, and in a weeks period, they will completely clear an office building of all the tech, put the new tech in, and the old tech goes off to an ITAD, and then we don't know what happens. Well, we sort of do, but.

Gaël Duez (15:45)

But just to finish on the financial side of things, so obviously there is this opportunity cost of having a space which is used only for garbage stuff. In the sense of the company, obviously we do know that these IT equipments are not good for the bin yet. But if they give this IT equipment to you, they will not have any issue regarding regulations, that's for sure.

ROSS COCKBURN (15:52)

Yeah.

Gaël Duez (16:12)

But they will give it to you, they will not get any money back. So where is the financial incentivization for them

ROSS COCKBURN (16:18)

No, and I, we reward them with social good. You pick remake array or reusing IT, you know that you've gone beyond the sustainability right for the planet bit. You're massively taking the social good. But you're also double-edged sword, that...

Gaël Duez (16:36)

Okay.

ROSS COCKBURN (16:43)

We're going to keep that device running as it was fit for purpose, as it was designed to be used. Potentially for another five years, in my case sometimes 10 years. If that's not good for the planet, what is?

Elaine Brown (16:58)

Yeah, and again, I come back to why businesses are sort of starting to think about it is because the environment, the ESG, the environment, social and governance is becoming more important sometimes than the money aspect because of tenders and procurement. And what it is, is legislation and the need for money that's driving them to do it. It's not out of the goodness of their heart. It is because it does make business sense ultimately for them because of their ESG. And I've heard this firsthand from businesses who now donate to us and said, yeah, we could get some money back for this. But actually, the money part is not the important part now because for our business to survive, we've got to be in the market for procurement. We've got to be in the market for bids and tenders. And ESG is becoming the key thing, not necessarily the bottom line instantaneously. But by doing the right thing, we will get the bottom line up. So that's why they're doing it, but they're being dragged to do it because it's a business sense.

Gaël Duez (18:02)

I got it. I think we should now try to size and better understand how positive this impact is. And you mentioned several times a social aspect. So I've got actually two question now the first one is the size. mean, how many perfectly functional devices are thrown away or disposed away?

roughly speaking in Scotland or in the UK, just to give a sense of proportion. Do we have these numbers actually?

ROSS COCKBURN (18:28)

I think there was something like 17 million was UK wide. ⁓ If you wanted to try and Pareto that diamond is how big is Scotland in relation to the rest of the UK? You could probably get around to a couple of million, maybe even a million devices, but that could include laptops, desktops, phones, you name it anything anybody needs but it will be in the millions.

Gaël Duez (18:55)

The order of magnitude is in the millions. ⁓ We're talking about a lot of devices. And then, how efficient is reusing approach of yours? Ross, you mentioned something about Ukraine and the fact that computers were used in Can you tell us a bit more about it and how long the lifespan is extended? Is it like one, two years? Is it 10 years? I'm very curious about it.

ROSS COCKBURN (19:12)

Cool. So recently the game changer for everybody in Elaine and I's world has been solid state drives. You can take a solid state hard drive and we have done this already, a Core 2 machine which is 20 years old and that machine will perform as quickly as a lot of people's brand new laptop. People say, well how do you do that? And I say, well… Microsoft is basically a monster truck filled with everything that you want to have if you were going out on the biggest adventure. You're going to have all the tools, everything is in this monster truck. And that's great if you're off into this wilderness where you don't know where you're going to get things from. But if you take a completely different approach and fling out half the stuff that you don't really need or never gonna use, and you think in the open source world, then you can take a Linux build and you basically say, what do we want to do? So you reverse engineer it and you say, well, I want to send an email, I want some word processing, I maybe want to do some presentations, I've got email and yet biggest thing, I want a browser, I need a browser. If you just put those four or five functions onto a machine, we've got those machines running in Ukraine on 15 gig, on the of devices that the NHS and the Department of Work and Pensions, so these are for thin clients, they're tiny little boxes that people stick on desks, they're used to access a server where all the applications are and then the short term processing is done very quickly by the thin client. We've realised by working with our friends at St Andrews University that we could actually get an operating system onto these as a standalone machine. And people said, you'll not get an operating system on 20 gig. It's on the motherboard. I said, no, we can. We stripped down Unbuntu and LUnbuntu and it took up 10 gig. There's still 10 gig there for files, other things. I have now got 9,000 of these out in Ukraine, in the eastern part of Ukraine, going into schools in Ukraine, keeping children safe and educated while there's drones and cruise missiles flying overhead. The normal course of action in the West with these devices, once they'd stopped being thin clients, would be to destroy them, because we don't have a use for them. We don't think about open source. We don't think about extending the life of those devices because we don't need to.

Elaine Brown (22:04)

Ross is like me, know, when businesses start to sort of think three to five years, they're going to get rid of them. But for us, these devices are still got a lifespan. So probably anything from three to five years, they'll be getting from businesses. ⁓ But they are still of use.

Gaël Duez (22:12)

Yeah. Okay.

Elaine Brown (22:24)

We in the remake rate encourage behavior change. So we are selling to customers refurbished tech that's come from businesses. So those businesses think they don't have a life anymore. They absolutely do. We refurbish them, bring them back to life and then sell them to customers. So that to try and get people to think that you don't have to buy the brand new shiny thing that comes in a package that's all, you know, looks lovely. And as Ross says, it's got millions of things on it that perhaps you don't actually need. So we actually pride ourselves in the remake rates. We don't upsell. If you go into certain shops in the retail world, when they go in, they're based on selling you bells and whistles that you don't need. Whereas we sit and listen to our customer. And very often, they need just the basics things. And again, those refurbished kit can actually do that. A cost point that is not, it's going to be good for their pocket.

ROSS COCKBURN (23:19)

Okay.

Elaine Brown (23:21)

But also great for the planet and it's keeping that device in use longer. So it's just about people valuing things differently. And we always say at the remakeery, second hand is not second best. It's actually the cool thing to do. It's the thing that we should be so proud that we have got this refurbished bit of kit. And we should be so proud to say it's six years old, it's seven years old. That's where we're trying to get to rather than people saying, I've got the latest gadget, you know, and I'm going to keep it for a year and then I'm going to get rid of it to get the next one. That should be, you know, holding your head in shame. That's where we need to get to. ⁓

ROSS COCKBURN (23:58)

That's one of our biggest challenges is people's perceptions and buying habits. And we're all going to have to work really hard to change this. And if you don't mind me swearing, but I say that we live in the now and new fuck you generation. Because Amazon have given us delivery, I can order something and I'll get it later on today. So I want it now. And I want that new thing now. And do you know what? I don't care about the planet, about the amount of fuel that was taken to get that delivered. You know, we have to change people's buying habits, consumer habits. We have to make, make do and mend what the remakery are all about. We have to make that cool. That's what people do. You know, I grew up in a time, which was the seventies, where we went to a thing called Jumbo Sales. That's where I used to get my next set of clothes was from the clothes that were getting thrown out by people elsewhere. My next door neighbour, we got hand made downs, I got a second hand bike, I did my bike up, And if society doesn't change all that thinking, then all the things that you're doing with Green IO, all the things that we're doing will not be worth a drop in the ocean.

Gaël Duez (25:14)

And actually that's a very fair point, Ross, because that's something I wanted you some clarification about. So on one this change in consumption and how Elaine framed it, like, yeah, you know, let's go back to the basics, what people truly need. I understand for some users, but I think there is a bit of the elephant in the room with gaming, and we know how… the massive share of people playing online games. I mean, I'm part of them. You cannot really run steam on a five years old or 10 years old device. Yet this is the main use for many people. So how do you foresee the future of reusing IT devices also with this huge pressure from the gaming industry?

Elaine Brown (26:02)

So yes, so it's back to, we can't get away from the fact that people will buy devices that meet their needs. that's fine. And we're not saying you can never buy anything new, you can never buy the latest thing. That would be bonkers and we're in this digital world. But what we can educate these gamers to, and this is what we do at The Remaker all the time, is when they no longer want that gadget because they're moving on to the new thing, that they realise that they have to be sustainable about they are giving away and that is the key thing, you know, that they don't want it, that the parts, the amazing treasure that's in those devices can still have a life beyond their gaming life. And then equally at the Remakery, we have a wall in the Remakery with a Retro Tech and it's full of gaming devices of 20 years vintage that are all still working. They are all still working, beeping and making fantastic retro tech noises. And we engage those gamers in coming in to see so that they can understand the rate of the pace of change.

ROSS COCKBURN (27:00)

Yeah.

Elaine Brown (27:13)

But those devices still have a place and they absolutely love those devices. know, they're geeking out on them and whatever. But it's an education piece for them to sort of say that, you know, the devices that you're using today are going to be the retro tech of tomorrow, but they still have a place in our planet. They still have a place that we should preserve them and nurture them. So we're not about don't buy anything new ever again. We're about thinking differently about what's inside that tech and nurturing it and

ROSS COCKBURN (27:41)

Yeah.

Elaine Brown (27:43)

Passing it on the future.

Gaël Duez (27:44)

And this is quite funny because we've noticed over the last years, I would say, a tendency in the gaming industry also to push new games with a retro style or some sort of older user experience. think of the Obra investing massively in the gameplay rather than the visuals.

ROSS COCKBURN (27:57)

Yeah.

Elaine Brown (27:58)

Yeah, just buy some retro tape from

Gaël Duez (28:06)

Just to get you right about the sort of secret recipes that you refurbishing. I heard two things, but correct me if I'm wrong. The first one is open source, which is a magical wind to extend the lifespan of a lot of devices. The second one is and the fact that today we have tools to avoid shredding the hard drives and making sure that we wipe them crystal clean, I would say. Is this right? Am I missing something here?

ROSS COCKBURN (28:36)

You're absolutely spot and I think what you were saying earlier about, you know, were discussing buying habits. Elaine and I both want people buying new computers, new devices, because if they weren't buying new computers, we wouldn't have devices to give away. What we want to make sure that they are doing is doing the right thing with the old device. You know, it's not stop progress, it's not stop buying. We want all this. But what we want is the right thing done at the end of life in terms of, and I hate the word disposal. It makes it sound like garbage and it's not. It is somebody's new computer. It's just, you just have to look at it in that way. And we do a lot of education with a lot of the donors that we have in and around us because when we were going into some of the bigger institutions to collect things. The desks and their offices and cupboards have been cleared with no thought of reuse. Everything had been put into a quick disposable metal cage so it could be rolled out to our vehicle and quickly repurpose it. said, look guys, you're the start of this process. If you don't help me here and all these TFT monitors are scratched or all these laptops are dented. What chance have I got in making sure that we can re-engineer all these things? So the education has to go back into the businesses in beyond the simple, it would be great for you to give us your stuff. Well, now you've made that decision. How do we do the material handling that preserves it and gives it the best, greatest potential chance of becoming a reused device?

Elaine Brown (30:23)

That's the key thing because a lot of these businesses see it as waste. They see it as waste. And Ross is spot on there. It absolutely breaks my heart. We've got some businesses who are literally flinging, flinging monitors into metal cages and things and going, here you are. Like we're some sort of garbage disposal service. saying, but we are about reuse and repair.

Gaël Duez (30:24)

So that...

ROSS COCKBURN (30:28)

Yeah. Good. Yeah, yeah,

Elaine Brown (30:48)

That is the waste hierarchy, the top of the waste hierarchy. What you're giving us becomes non reusable. And the other thing that annoys me is a lot of companies, again, because of data security, they're sending us things that are remote locked or bios locked. And that means that our potential to actually reuse that item becomes impossible. And so therefore, they've just given us a piece of waste that we're going to take for part.

ROSS COCKBURN (31:11)

Yeah, they're bricks basically. They're you know, iPad or Macbook that's four years old, that's MDM locked and I can't do a thing with it. And then it takes you about six months to find the person that can unlock the thing. And it's so frustrating. But we probably like you, have a set of, we have almost like a contract now that we hand out terms and conditions. If you want to work with reusing IT, remake it, here's all the things you need to think about when you are decommissioning. That's the word for it just makes the whole process a lot smoother. And the exciting thing is that I think as more and more young people come into higher positions within companies, so they're becoming the decision makers, then we're finding

Elaine Brown (31:40)

Yes.

ROSS COCKBURN (32:03)

And Elaine will back me up on this. They're making the right decisions. So one of our biggest ones recently was a huge financial organization called Agon. And the gentleman in Agon who wanted to give reusing IT their laptops, he had already decided before he met me that this was going to happen. We just had to work together to get all the other parts of the business to sign into this because he was 100 % convinced that getting £50 per laptop back from Dell as a rebate was not worth more than the opportunity to let that laptop carry on doing its job, educating someone.

Elaine Brown (32:42)

And it's the stories that those reused devices bring that is money in the bank. That is money in the bank. And more and more the companies want those stories and that's what we provide to them. They want the stats of tonnage diversion from landfill and CO2 emissions saved. They do want that because that is part of their journey and their ESG. But what they are asking more and more from us are the stories and they want to be part of that story.

ROSS COCKBURN (32:46)

Absolutely.

Elaine Brown (33:10)

So when people, businesses donate their tech, a proportion of what we refurbish we sell to make money to help us do it, but a proportion we gift to those that are facing digital poverty. Now, Ross does amazing work in gifting those devices to war-torn areas. But here in Scotland, we've got over 800,000 people who are facing digital poverty. Digital poverty means that they don't actually have a device.

ROSS COCKBURN (33:31)

Yeah.

Elaine Brown (33:37)

So they can't connect in the digital world, or they have a device that's not sufficient to live in this digital age. It's maybe a mobile phone for a family of five trying to connect digitally to this world. That is digital poverty. So again, the devices that we then refurbish for gifting helps to tackle that digital poverty piece. So we work with over 60 other charities here in Edinburgh who identify the beneficiaries, who identify these families that are… needing to be digitally included into our digital world. then we donate on behalf of that business and the businesses want to come in. They want to be part of that gifting story. They want to meet the people and that is what they want. They want the stories of what their devices have done for people in our community. And we provide them with those wonderful stories that then they put into their annual reports, they put into their tenders. That is money in the bank to them because they have done amazing good. And they're quite shocked the fact that here in 2025, we've got that amount of people in Scotland, a wealthy country, who do not have the ability to engage in the digital world. It's a scandal. It's a disgrace. And that is where our reused IT is doing amazing work, because it's bringing that gift of connectivity to people who didn't have it. So it's great for the planet amazing for these people who can then take part in life here in Scotland.

ROSS COCKBURN (35:07)

There

Gaël Duez (35:08)

That's closing the loop. And just one side note, Elaine, because you're also someone who knows how to communicate, as you rightfully said, or was it Ross? I don't remember. Disposal is an ugly word. And because the IT word loves acronym, I suggest you could use UITA, which means nothing, but it will be unused IT asset. And by using the word asset rather than disposal, it changes completely things in people's perception because an asset is an asset is something that you either sell, you buy, it's got value.

ROSS COCKBURN (35:41)

Yeah.

Elaine Brown (35:46)

It does. It's got value, yes. It's about terminology. We've got very good over the last 20, 30 years of using the word recycle. So you'll hear everybody sort of say, oh yes, I recycle and what have you. As though this is it, they've done it, game over, they've done their bit for the planet. And it's just that terminology, but recycle is actually not the good thing, you know? And so what we're trying to do at The Remaker, it's all about using language to get your message across. And so we just bang on about repair and reuse. And then people start going, yeah, I remember, you my grandparents used to repair things and we bring the joy of repair. We run a repair cafe every Friday here at The Remaker so people can come in, get a cup of tea, slice a cake, lovely.

ROSS COCKBURN (36:24)

Yeah.

Elaine Brown (36:41)

And they bring in their tech hardware for repair or their textiles for repair. But the difference is they stay and they watch that repair happening and they learn how to do it themselves and they see the magic of repair and repair is magical and people get this real feeling of joy when they walk out the door with a bit of kit that they thought, I'll never get that fixed and they fixed it and it's going to last and they feel a pride in the fact that they've repaired that themselves and they're going to value that differently. So it's getting that word repair out there. So we want to get away from recycling because that's going to evoke the wrong feeling. We want to get into the reuse and repairs terminology because that's going to give you a warm glow.

ROSS COCKBURN (37:25)

Yeah.

Elaine Brown (37:25)

And people and assets yes we use that word all the time because it is a value.

ROSS COCKBURN (37:31)

Have a big part to play in this, all governments have, because the agency that manages a lot of this from our perspective is SEPA. They call it waste. That's not a very good definition to start. I hate it when we go to a donor or a client and say, can you give me a waste transfer note? And I go, it's not waste. It's somebody's new computer.

Elaine Brown (37:51)

Okay.

Gaël Duez (37:53)

So I.

ROSS COCKBURN (37:56)

I think we need to redefine things and I

Gaël Duez (37:59)

I got it. Naming things is crucial here. And there is a massive investment to do in communication and even a bit of marketing to make repair sexy again and stop using the word recycling, et cetera. And it seems that you run pretty much a business operations because if I… gather the different pieces of information that you provide. Basically your three secret weapons are, as we said, open source safety and also education of your donors, to make sure that they handle the devices properly. So I understand better. And I also understand better social impact because I was not that much into it. mean, the numbers about digital poverty and the amount of people around the world still needing digital devices at cheap or zero price. Yeah, it makes a difference and this story can be appealing to a lot of companies or individuals. So I got it about how the repair industry is taking off and very fortunately taking over a bit about this myth of recycling because we all know in IT, recycling doesn't exist. We have a bit of down cycling, which is managing to extract a few resources from the massive amount of resources used to build an IT equipment and used not to the same purpose, but to a purpose where it will be less pure and less valuable. So for instance, using the plastic from the case for housing construction, but it is definitely not to build another case. Now I've got an amazing news for both of you, because as you said, you need new laptops and devices to feed this process So I've got a great news for you.

ROSS COCKBURN (39:28)

Yeah.

Gaël Duez (39:42)

And this is not a joke, Microsoft has decided to terminate Windows 10 support and thanks to Microsoft. Thank you so much, Microsoft. We're gonna have millions, dozens of millions of new devices that will be ready to enter your process. isn't it such an amazing news?

ROSS COCKBURN (39:42)

Thank you. Well, on the one hand, on the one hand, I'm crying for the rest of humanity and big businesses. I'm going, what a shame. But on the other hand, I'm going, yes, because, you know, certainly the scale of the operation we have in trying to help children in Ukraine, Africa don't even get started. I mean, there are millions, tens of millions of children who are not.

Gaël Duez (40:04)

hahahaha

Elaine Brown (40:06)

Thank

ROSS COCKBURN (40:25)

You know, we thought the digital divide was something between the West and Africa. We found out during lockdown that we have a big digital divide in our own country. we want one of the reasons I'm doing any of this is I want to get, but I want to get the Scotland, Ukraine, the Western world sorted out digitally included, sustainable, all the rest of it, so we can focus on trying to help children in Africa. But Windows 10, great. mean, Microsoft's made that decision. It's created a whole new source of devices for us. It's not great for the planet. Nope, definitely not. It's probably not great for big businesses having to spend all the money. I'm sure they're not overly delighted. And it is actually starting to backfire on Microsoft because the Danish government have now said, for certain departments, we're not using Windows anymore. We are going open source. There's an article that we recently published on a blog that we do about inclusivity that was all about the Danish government moving across to Libra office in certain departments as a trial. And they've said, Microsoft office, bye bye. You've had enough money. So there's a lot of change happening. no, I and Elaine probably agree with me, know, the Windows 10 thing, shame for business, but great for us.

Elaine Brown (41:52)

It's a double edged sword really. It's back to just enforcing obsolescence again, which is already there anyway. So yeah, and for small businesses, because Scotland is made up primarily of SMEs, small, medium sized enterprises. And for them, that's a huge cost to their business. So it's kind of educating them that perhaps they could go with the refurbished kit and use a different system, Linux or whatever, you know, and that might drive our B2B business, you know, through refurbished, because I'd love businesses to start buying refurbished from get go. That would be great. And we do that a lot with a lot of our charities around here and social enterprises when they set up their businesses, we encourage them to buy refurbished kit right from the beginning of their business, it's good for their pocket etc. But yeah we're doing a big campaign around the end of 10 at the moment to try and get those businesses to do the right, you know if they're going to have to change because of it then do the right thing with the end product the

ROSS COCKBURN (42:58)

Exclusive for you, Gail, that like everything else with Microsoft and the spin, it's not the whole truth because 10 isn't completely going. There are essential security updates will be continued to be supplied to those customers that are so large that they are not moving to 11. So Microsoft has said, right, OK, we realize you're such a big customer. We will continue to support you until you're ready to move with essential security updates. They will also support education at a cost, one pound per machine per year, with essential security updates for Windows 10. So they're not completely killing it. They're just saying, we'd rather you move to 11, but if you can't or won't, we will keep helping you. It's not the sales pitch. The sales guys go, no, shut up. Don't tell them you can sort of use it. It's it's all or nothing.

Gaël Duez (44:01)

But I was a bit sarcastic when I was introducing the Windows 10 scandal, But what is your stance from the Right to Repair movement? And I know, Elaine, you're quite invested into this initiative. What does it say about the maturity or the pitfalls of the Right to Repair in IT?

ROSS COCKBURN (44:07)

No.

Elaine Brown (44:22)

Well, for a kick off, it doesn't include laptops and what have you to a huge degree. that's the thing, you know, they're concentrating on tumble dryers and washing machines and everything. Great, fabulous. But, you know, e-waste is driven by a lot of the technology that we have. So it's missing a trick there. And again, I'm hugely invested in the fact that I don't want words on bits of paper. You know, we've had directives, we've had route maps, we've had investigations. Lovely. Makes for beautiful bits of paper and legislation that looks like you're doing the right thing. But here we are. I it was talked about in 2021 and here we are in 2025. No really further forward in my opinion around laptops. In fact, for the last two years, I've attended the Repair Cafe in, well, this year it was in the House of Lords, last year it was in the House of Parliament where we took the right to repair. So we took our repair cafes down to the actual Houses of Parliament, down to the House of Lords and got MPs etc to come and see what repair cafes, what

ROSS COCKBURN (45:21)

Yeah.

Elaine Brown (45:35)

Right to repair means and getting them to sign the declaration and they took their moment of glory where they're signing the declaration for we support the right to repair they get their photo opportunity it's lovely we've had a nice trip down to London but where are we we're still no further forward so you know in principle it's a great idea but again it's not widely forecast to the customer so that they don't know their rights to demand bits to be open it you know that

ROSS COCKBURN (45:45)

Yeah.

Elaine Brown (46:02)

Tools to open devices, the right to repair and not get their warranty out of date, what have you. So it's not broadcast widely to the consumer, it's not being to the manufacturer, and it's still in my opinion words on bits of paper. That's position.

ROSS COCKBURN (46:17)

Yeah, I totally agree. Gael, I've got a great idea for a television program and it's going to get teams of people and you stick an iMac in front of them and you say you've got half an hour, can you get into the iMac and take out the memory or the hard drive? And I swear to God, would be a bunch of them that eventually would just hit the thing with a hammer because

Elaine Brown (46:39)

Yeah.

Gaël Duez (46:40)

What you just mentioned is absolutely pivotal years ago, France was one of the first countries in the world to adopt a law against planned obsolescence and for the right to reaper. It was pushed very hard by an association that I admire a lot which is called HOPE it's Alt a l'obsolescence programmée so it means in French stop to planned obsolescence and one of the most vocal members of this association is Laetitia Vasseur and she has petition, has lobbied, she managed a lot in this field. And recently she was debriefing this massive achievement and she dropped a number that was astonishing for me. There are three cases waiting to be judged by the French justice. Once I think it's canon. The other one is not HP. The other one is Apple and I cannot remember the third one. And the problem is that there is a low there are association and a department of the French government suing these companies and there is no court actually kickstarting even the trial. And it has been seven years. So what is the message here and why? And I can understand unfunded and not expert enough, I would say, court and people of law to deal with their super technical trials. But that says something about, let's pass a bill. Let's look all shiny on the newspaper. But actually, it won't move really the needle and we will not really face big businesses because we will not sue them.

Elaine Brown (48:16)

Until big businesses and manufacturers are held to account and perhaps fined and it really sort of knocks them where it hurts in the pocket, will they move to do it? Because everything about their business model says, well, we don't want people repairing stuff because that's going to mean that they're not going to buy stuff and we don't want to give them the tools. So they're not advertising, hey, people out there, you know, we've got the tools if you want to open up your. It's back to, there you are, there's legislation, it's lovely, but it has no teeth, it has no teeth and no driver.

ROSS COCKBURN (48:47)

Yeah.

Gaël Duez (48:51)

It has no teeth.

Elaine Brown (48:53)

You know, we started this conversation talking about education But equally, what we've got is circular economy skills gap here because here in education. No student at primary school, no student in secondary school, no student at college or university will ever learn the skills of tech hardware because it does not exist in our curriculum. So there is a skills economy gap right away. There are jobs to be had in the future in this area, but we are not equipping our education to upskill these people. And when kids come in and do a bit volunteering with us, they're like,

ROSS COCKBURN (49:22)

Yeah. Yeah.

Elaine Brown (49:32)

Why are we not getting this at school? This would be cool, but we're not teaching it. So we are really far behind. If we're talking about we are racing against time now, for our planet. Our education system and our curriculum system is not identifying the gaps that we need to fill. And that worries me.

Gaël Duez (49:50)

So thanks a lot because Elaine, actually, you closed the loop of the podcast. We started with education. We finished with education. We learned a lot all the way during the podcast. It was interesting, the discussion also about the Windows 10 scandal, because as you say, Ross, it's a bit more subtle than it looks like. And it also explains things on

ROSS COCKBURN (49:57)

Yes!

Gaël Duez (50:13)

How much the right to repair is still a wishful thinking more than an actual law applied to everyone starting with big corporations. So thanks a lot for this. Is there any final piece of positive news that you would like to share with the listeners, even if you already shared quite a lot of good numbers and positive trends?

Elaine Brown (50:34)

Yeah, I always like ending on a positive and whilst it sounds like in our podcast we're sort of saying, we're going nowhere, we are because we have to keep having that voice and here at the Remakery our strap line is, waste less, live more. And I believe that there's opportunity for us all to do that if we truly waste less. We're going to live better lives, we're going to have a better planet and it is doable if everybody just gets the message and you know I'm sure we can improve the planet one refurbished laptop at a time. let's not lose hope, there is hope. Would you agree Ross?

ROSS COCKBURN (51:03)

Yeah.

Gaël Duez (51:12)

IT items at the time. I love this one.

ROSS COCKBURN (51:17)

I have a bit of an adage that I sometimes like to look back in time to see what I should do now because we're human beings and not one problem or one situation hasn't already been. We just have to put it into context. so recently I discovered Ada Lovelace and she was a mathematician she's sort of widely claimed to be probably the first computer programmer. 1815 she was born her approach was poetical science and I thought poetical science what's that and basically it's when you merge imagination and intuition and the poetic spirit with logic and analytical rigor and mathematics and thought. And I think that the hope for all of us is that the businesses, the numbers people adopt a little bit of this poetic spirit, this love of life, they become dreamers. They want to go back to the simple things that we all shared when we sat around campfires and we just helped each other move on. You know, humanity, wisdom, all these simple things that we had in the early, early days, was when we all we had. And if we can get back to that more and use that as our philosophy and our thinking, then yes, there is hope for us all. And we will have a green future. We will save the planet. But I think we have to go back in time, back to the very early days and look at things and learn lessons from our ancestors that are calling us from the depths and saying, guys, don't give up. You know, it'll be OK. We got you here, so now just go don't go fuck it up basically.

Gaël Duez (53:08)

So Ross, thanks a lot because now we know that we have the biggest army because the dead are more numerous than the livings. So that's maybe the best news since the beginning of the podcast. Anyway, thanks a lot both of you. That was a lovely podcast. I learned a lot.

ROSS COCKBURN (53:16)

Lord of the Rings, we're here! We got the wee tea poured out, we're

Elaine Brown (53:19)

This is putting into walking day tonight.

Gaël Duez (53:33)

And I'm pretty sure the listeners will do as well. We don't talk that often about hardware and IT equipment, at as much as I would love to, but thanks to you, that's a gap that we reduced a bit today. So thanks a lot.

ROSS COCKBURN (53:40)

Thank you for asking us. Bye. Au revoir. Bye bye.

Elaine Brown (53:49)

Thank you. Bye.

Gaël Duez (53:51)

Bye.

Gaël Duez (53:55)

Thank you for listening to this Green IO episode. Because accessible and transparent information is in the DNA of Green IO, all the references mentioned in this episode, as well as the full transcript, are in the show notes. You can find these notes on your favorite podcast platform and, of course, on the website greenio.tech. If you enjoyed this interview, please share it either on social media or directly with relatives working in the IT industry, it will help them see that a strong momentum is starting around repair and that's good news.

In our next episode, we will be back in the US discussing water consumption of data center again, but this time from an academic perspective, we will have the pleasure to welcome two of the most renowned researchers on the topic of data center and environmental sustainability, the Dr. Mohammad Islam and the Dr. Shaolei Ren. Stay tuned. By the way, Green IO is a podcast and much more, so visit greenio.tech to subscribe to our free monthly newsletter and check the conferences we organize across the globe. London is next week. September 23rd and 24th are the dates with an amazing lineup to discuss the question, good for business, good for the planet?

As a Green IO listener, you can get a free ticket to any Green IO conferences using the voucher GREENIOVIP. Just make sure to have one before the 30 free tickets per conference are all gone. I'm looking forward to meeting you there to help you, fellow responsible technologists, build a greener digital world.

❤️ Never miss an episode! Hit the subscribe button on the player above and follow us the way you like.

 📧 Our Green IO monthly newsletter is also a good way to be notified, as well as getting carefully curated news on digital sustainability packed with exclusive Green IO contents.