Digital sustainability is becoming a much bigger part of the conversation about how organisations design, buy and manage technology.
But the discussion can still feel abstract.
Carbon. Cloud infrastructure. Data centres. Device manufacture. Procurement. AI. E-waste.
All of these things matter, but if digital sustainability is going to become part of everyday organisational practice, it needs to become much more tangible.
Over a series of conversations with people working across government, technology, sustainability and circularity, I explored what practical digital sustainability might actually look like.
The conversations were different, but the themes were remarkably consistent.
1. Start by reducing waste
One of the strongest themes across all of the conversations was waste.
When we think about environmental waste, we often picture physical materials. But digital organisations create waste in many other forms too.
Unnecessary data is waste.
Duplicated systems are waste.
Building the same functionality repeatedly is waste.
Replacing usable devices simply because they have reached an arbitrary refresh date is waste.
So are unnecessary features, oversized images, unused infrastructure, repeated discovery work and procurement exercises that solve problems another organisation has already addressed.
That changes the sustainability question.
Instead of only asking: How do we reduce the carbon footprint of this technology?We can also ask: Does this thing need to exist in this form at all?
That is often a much more useful place to begin.
My conversation with Emma Charles explored this in more depth, particularly the opportunity for public services to reduce duplication, reuse existing work and make sustainability part of normal organisational decision-making.
Read the full article: Digital sustainability: finding the practical opportunities.
2. Reuse what we already have
Reuse appeared repeatedly across the conversations, both in relation to hardware and to digital services.
At a service level, this might mean reusing:
service patterns
research
code
platforms
components
procurement learning
existing technology
At a hardware level, it means questioning the assumption that devices should automatically be replaced every three or four years.
A laptop that no longer meets the needs of one employee may still have years of useful life elsewhere.
Devices can be repaired, refurbished, remanufactured, redistributed, donated or responsibly recycled.
My conversation with Steve Haskew explored just how significant this opportunity could be.
Manufacturing a single laptop has a substantial environmental footprint. Extending device lifetimes therefore has the potential to reduce emissions, resource consumption and procurement costs at the same time.
There is also an important social opportunity; Devices that are no longer required inside public organisations can potentially support families, schools and communities experiencing digital exclusion.
Read the full article: Device Reuse: The Digital Sustainability Opportunity Hiding in Plain Sight
3. Think about the whole lifecycle
Reuse is only one part of the circular economy.
Another important theme was the need to think about what happens across the entire lifecycle of technology.
A chat with Ryan Bark from Closing the Loop highlighted how powerful simple circular models can be.
Closing the Loop uses a one-for-one approach in which the purchase or sale of a new device can be linked to the collection and responsible recycling of an end-of-life device.
The wider lesson is important.
Circularity does not necessarily have to be complicated.
Organisations can build clearer pathways for reuse, refurbishment, resale, donation and recycling into the way they already manage devices.
Sustainability then stops being an additional project and becomes part of everyday technology management.
Read the full article: Closing the Loop: A Better Way to Manage Devices Sustainably
4. Use procurement as a lever for change
Procurement emerged as one of the strongest levers available to organisations. Most conversations notes that buying decisions can have enormous influence.
Organisations can ask suppliers:
What are you doing to reduce the environmental impact of your service?
Do you have a net zero transition plan?
How do you support repair, reuse or refurbishment?
What happens to devices at the end of their useful life?
How does your hosting model support sustainability?
How will your product help us meet our own environmental commitments?
My conversation with Craig Melson from techUK explored the potential of a proportionate “comply or explain” approach.
Even asking the question can begin to change behaviour.
Public bodies do not need perfect answers before they start using their buying power to signal that sustainability matters.
Read the full article: From cloud to circular tech: lessons from techUK for digital sustainability
5. Make sustainability part of governance
Individual actions matter, but sustainable digital practice cannot depend entirely on enthusiastic individuals.
It needs to become part of organisational governance.
My conversation with Ned Gartside explored how sustainability is increasingly being built into service standards, assessment processes and strategic decision-making.
This is significant because teams already balance many competing considerations:
user needs
accessibility
security
cost
performance
resilience
delivery constraints
Sustainability needs to become part of that same decision-making matrix.
When it becomes part of governance, teams are required to discuss it.
Leaders see it.
Trade-offs become visible.
And sustainability moves from being a vague aspiration to something organisations are expected to demonstrate.
Read the full article: Designing Digital for Sustainability: From Mandates to Meaningful Change
Sustainability is full of trade-offs
One of the other lessons from these conversations was that sustainability rarely produces a single perfect answer.
There will almost always be trade-offs:
- An in-person meeting might create more travel emissions but improve collaboration, relationships or wellbeing.
- Video may use more bandwidth but support communication and accessibility.
- A new technology may consume significant computing resources but enable much larger environmental savings elsewhere.
Good digital sustainability therefore cannot rely entirely on rigid checklists. Context matters.
The goal should be to make those trade-offs transparent and each decision a conscious one.
The business case matters too
I found a strong economic argument when talking about sustainability. Many sustainable decisions are also financially efficient decisions:
- Using less cloud infrastructure can reduce cost.
- Storing less unnecessary data can reduce cost.
- Extending device lifetimes can reduce cost.
- Reusing systems, patterns and research can reduce cost.
- Simplifying digital services can reduce both staff time and user effort.
This matters because sustainability can sometimes be positioned as an additional organisational burden.
In reality, many of the strongest sustainability interventions are simply examples of good operational management.
Less duplication.
Less waste.
Better use of existing assets.
Simpler services.
Smarter procurement.
Better value.
Progress matters more than perfection
A consistent message was that organisations should not wait.
Digital sustainability is still developing as a discipline.
Measurement is imperfect.
Standards are evolving.
Carbon data can be difficult to obtain.
Supplier information varies.
There will always be another metric we could collect before making a decision.
But waiting for perfect information risks becoming an excuse for doing nothing.
Organisations can start with the information they already have.
Look at cost.
Look at storage.
Look at data volumes.
Look at device lifecycles.
Look at duplication.
Look at procurement.
Look at unnecessary complexity.
Ask where effort, money, energy or materials are being wasted.
Then make something slightly better.
Across one team, that improvement might appear small.
Across hundreds of services, thousands of employees and hundreds of thousands of devices, those small decisions begin to become significant.
Doing digital better
The biggest lesson I have taken from these conversations is that digital sustainability should not be viewed as a niche discipline.
It is closely connected to good service design, good procurement, good governance, good technology management and good stewardship of public money.
So, how do we make better decisions about what we build, buy, store, replace and reuse?
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