Wanzl awarded certificate for sustainable use of company hardware

Green IT gains ground at the Wanzl Group: as an expert in retail solutions, material handling and access solutions as well as airport and hotel services, the company is committed to sustainable corporate governance and is steadfast in meeting its responsibility towards society and the environment. For thjs reason, Wanzl entered into a partnership with non-profit IT refurbisher AfB social & green IT in 2023. AfB stands for “Arbeit für Menschen mit Behinderung” (work for people with disabilities) and is a recognised inclusive company, which has again received the German Sustainability Award in 2024. Last year, the collaboration gave 294 used Wanzl company laptops, PCs and smartphones a second life. This is because, for a large part, the retired hardware is still fully functional and is deleted, reconditioned and resold at AfB. This extends the useful life of a smartphone, for example, from around two to four years. Secondary recycling preserves valuable resources and saves energy, CO2 and water. AfB has now documented the specific environmental impact achieved last year in a certificate and officially presented it to Wanzl on 19 June.

"We were able to rescue almost 300 end-of-life IT devices from being scrapped last year through our partnership with AfB. I am particularly pleased that most of the hardware could be remanufactured and remarketed, such as 97 percent of our old laptops," reports Dierk Meissner, Senior Vice President Global IT at Wanzl. He continues: "The collaboration with AfB is very important to us. Together with AfB, we want to continue to promote inclusion in the labour market and environmentally-friendly IT remanufacturing in the coming years in order to actively contribute to the achievement of the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals."

"Partnership-based, reliable, sustainable – the cooperation with Wanzl proves how the circular economy can succeed in the IT industry. We have been collecting devices from Wanzl, deleting the data memory with certified software, checking the devices and refuelling them with the latest operating system," says AfB Managing Director Daniel Büchle. “We sell the as-new hardware to private individuals, associations, small and medium-sized companies or make donations to schools.”

AfB can measure the specific assets conserved on the basis of studies by TU Berlin, myclimate and Star Cooperation: Of the 294 IT devices that Wanzl handed over to AfB last year, more than 45 percent could be remarketed. The recycling rate of monitors was even as high as 93 percent. Through remarketing and recycling, 65,313 kWh of energy, 137,516 l of water and 17,775 kg of CO2 equivalents were saved. Faulty hardware is used for spare parts or for recycling to recover raw materials. It also helped to secure a job for a person with a disability. This is because the IT refurbishment is carried out by around 660 AfB employees, around 48 percent of whom are severely disabled

The Wanzl Group's impact certificate is available on the Wanzl website www.wanzl.com/de_DE/unternehmen/nachhaltigkeit.