New or Refurbished Laptop? The Environmental Side of a Corporate Procurement Decision

When purchasing a laptop, factors like price, performance, warranty, and operational security usually take center stage. From a sustainability perspective, however, another crucial question should be asked:

Do we really need to manufacture a new device?

During an evaluation of the internal operations and sustainability initiatives at Greenbors Consulting Ltd., we approached this question using a lifecycle-oriented scenario analysis.

We didn't simply compare a new laptop with a refurbished one. Instead, we examined how the same corporate function can be fulfilled over a 10-year period, and how key environmental metrics fluctuate under different procurement, usage, and repair scenarios.

Using data from lifecycle databases, we modeled various procurement, repair, and failure scenarios over 10 years of corporate use. When developing our assumptions, we also incorporated real-world failure rate data from our own corporate device inventory. Because this study served as a lifecycle-based comparative analysis to support internal decision-making, its results should not be automatically generalized to every laptop model or procurement scenario.

Avoiding New Manufacturing Delivered the Largest Savings

Manufacturing a new laptop involves significant material and energy consumption. If the operational lifespan of a pre-manufactured, well-functioning device can be safely extended, a portion of the manufacturing footprint for the next new device is deferred or avoided entirely.

Naturally, refurbishment carries its own environmental impacts. Batteries degrade, components can fail, and the energy efficiency of an older device may lag behind a newer model. Therefore, we modeled both a "most likely" scenario and a "worst-case" scenario requiring multiple component replacements.

The Advantage of Refurbishment Holds Up—Even Beyond the Ideal Scenario

In the less favorable scenario, we factored in multiple battery replacements as well as a full motherboard replacement. Even under these conditions, the carbon footprint of the refurbished device model remained 7.6% lower than the new device alternative evaluated.

In the most likely scenario—scaled across 20 employees over a 10-year period—the model based on refurbished devices resulted in:

• 22.7% lower carbon footprint

• 16.2% lower water consumption

• 13.2% lower fossil resource depletion index

• 21.3% lower mineral resource depletion index
  

...compared to the 10-year scenario relying on the purchase of two consecutive new laptops.

For a team of 20 employees over 10 years, this translates to a modeled carbon footprint reduction of approximately 2.9 tonnes of CO2e.

A key takeaway from this study is that device lifespan itself is a vital corporate procurement variable. Replacing a fully functional laptop simply because it has reached a predetermined policy age is not always environmentally optimal.

Circularity in corporate IT doesn't necessarily start with cutting-edge technology—it begins with a much simpler question:

Do we really need to manufacture a new device to deliver the exact same functional performance?