THE SUSTAINABILITY INTERVIEW
Circularity: from e‐waste to“ every device lives twice” Electronic waste, or e‐waste, is the fastest‐growing waste stream in the world. The UK has one of the highest levels of e‐waste per person globally, ranking second only to Norway.
Virgin Media O2 has been tackling this challenge through O2 Recycle, one of the UK’ s leading take‐back and recycling schemes. Over more than a decade, the programme has helped prevent around four million devices from ending up in landfill, while supporting customers to trade‐in old phones easily.
Dana’ s focus now is on radically extending the life of hardware, both for customer devices and for network equipment.“ One of our key goals is that every device lives twice,” she reveals.“ It’ s a bold, reuse‐first commitment and recycling as a last resort.”
The strategy rests on three pillars. First, making repair and refurbishment frictionless, mainstream and attractive to customers, backed by clear language and positioning. Second, increasing recovery rates via frictionless take‐back journeys, so idle devices in drawers re‐enter circulation instead of gathering dust. Third, working with specialist partners on advanced recycling for network and data centre equipment, using advances such as urban mining and bioleaching to recover copper, gold and rare earth materials.
Virgin Media O2 recently signed a three-year partnership with NTT DATA and Net2Source( N2S) to change how end-of-life IT equipment is managed
sustainabilitymag. com
27