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Recycling Routers

Cisco has put in place numerous programs to enable customers and partners to return product to us.

They are CTMP (Trade-in old for new product discount), Service Returns (return under service contract),Takeback and recycle program (return of end of useful life product for recycling).

When receive a router back it goes to our recycler call SIMS Recycling Solutions. Once the routers have finished the process all the materials are split into the raw/pure state. The raw materials are then sold back onto the open materials markets.

The process can be best viewed here

Know the Industry :: IT in Focus

Going Greener

Last month CEO John Chambers announced that Cisco has set a goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions from its worldwide operations by 25 per cent over the next four years. It's the most recent in a long line of eco-conscious initiatives that Cisco has been involved with in the last couple of years.

Take a look at www.cisco.com, and you'll see the company has already made several big commitments to reducing its environmental impact: energy conservation, waste-reduction programmes, end-of-life schemes for redundant products… the list is impressive. But what all this eco-friendly activity doesn't reveal, at least not immediately, is the vision people like Dave Rogers, technical projects manager at the European Markets Green IT Team, have about the potential the company has to help thousands of other organisations around the world do the same.

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Reducing Air Travel

"In 2006 Cisco signed up to two of the Clinton Global Initiative programmes," says Rogers. "The first, the Carbon Collaboration programme, meant that, as a company, we committed to reducing the amount we use air travel, one of the most significant elements of our carbon footprint. This initiative led to the development of our Telepresence technology – high-definition IP teleconferencing – that we've been deploying throughout the organisation. It's a terrific product, a real alternative to the face-to face meeting."

go greenMartin de Beer, Cisco's head of Emerging Technologies Group, demonstrated the quality of Telepresence recently on CNN, revealing that the system had already saved the company over 100m dollars in travel costs, allowed it to take 8000 cars off the road, and meant that out of 100,000 meetings Cisco employees had conducted around the world, 16,000 avoided travel.

The second Clinton initiative Cisco signed up to was the Connected Urban Development programme, which has seen the company working with seven cities around the world to help them build strategic systems for managing their carbon emissions and environmental impact. And it's in this area, says Rogers,that Cisco has come to recognise its wider role in terms of environmental responsibility.

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The Network as a Tool for Environmental Change

"We believe that the network has a critical role to play in helping organisations manage and reduce their carbon emissions while still allowing their businesses to grow. Our technology, the network, is a platform that can allow any company to change its behaviour, and it's really only through behaviour change that a company will be able to reduce its environmental impact."

But it's with Networking Academies that the potential impact reaches another level.

"We're hoping that the message is getting across to our instructors and students that it's not just about the technology itself," says Rogers.

"It's about sitting down with a customer, learning how they work, and seeing if there is a role for the network to help increase productivity and reduce costs, which are increasingly environmental costs, such as travel. And that's not just about global companies and international flights. If you can provide phone or video technology for a small company which means it doesn't have to send an employee on a 20-mile drive to see a customer, there is an instant environmental benefit straight away."

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A Sustainable Future

That's the vision, but if Rogers had one wish that might help build a sustainable future, what would it be?

"That in 10 years' time, carbon accounting had become just as important as financial accounting. I think that would make a huge difference to the future of our planet. Oh, and that instructors would no longer have to tell students to remember to turn off any unnecessary NetAcad lab equipment overnight."

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