Accelerating Digital Circularity: Highlights from the GDSA Circular Economy & Waste Reduction Working Group First in-person meeting

As part of our ongoing work, the DICE Network+ through our research and Impact Fellow, Diego Bermudez, participated in Defra’s Government Digital Sustainability Alliance (GDSA) Circular Economy and Waste Reduction Working Group first in-person session. 

The GDSA acts as an advisory group to government, with the working groups provide guidance and expertise on specific topics and areas of focus. Bringing together key stakeholders across the public sector, IT supply chains, industry, and academia, the session focused on translating the UK Government’s ambitions for its own ICT estate into actionable outcomes and mapping potential implementation pathways for the coming year.  

Context: Where Government IT Stands & The 2030 Horizon

The working group’s roadmap aligns with the insights from the Greening Government Commitments (GGC) ICT Annual Report (2024–2025) and the strategic commitments being proposed in the Draft UK Government Digital Sustainability Strategy.  

Current Baseline (2024–2025 Highlights) 

  • Emissions Reduction: Estimated UK government ICT carbon emissions dropped 13% year-on-year to 294,654 tonnes 𝐶𝑂2𝑒.
  • Waste Minimisation: Total government ICT waste fell 36% to 955 tonnes, with less than 1% going to landfill or incineration without energy recovery.  
  • Circular Value Realisation: The government unlocked over £2 million in value by reselling end-of-life IT devices.  
  • The Scope 3 Challenge: Over 74% of government ICT carbon footprint consists of Scope 3 emissions, driven predominantly by embodied carbon in hardware manufacturing across an estate of over 1 million monitors, 902,000 laptops, and 346,000 smartphones.  

 

Workshop Highlights: Mapping Key Enablers Across the Hardware Lifecycle

During the working group session, participants mapped out proposed systemic enablers across each stage of the hardware lifecycle to support the reduction of sustainability impacts in ICT systems and operations. 

Design & Manufacturing (Building for Longevity)

  • Extended Software Lifespans: Advocating for a minimum of 7+ years of firmware support from manufacturers to prevent functional hardware from being rendered obsolete by software updates. 
  • Repairability & Benchmarking: Promoting modular design for second-life, official repair guides, and standardised quality/performance testing (utilising standards and Total Cost of Ownership models). 

Procurement & Financial Architecture

  • Refurbish-by-Default: Shifting departmental procurement policies toward a “refurb-by-default” approach that explicitly balances budget, carbon reduction, and waste avoidance. 
  • Persona-Based Allocation: Developing decision-tree criteria (e.g., reserving top-tier new hardware for 20% of high-power computational roles while fulfilling 80% of standard roles with high-spec second-life hardware). 
  • Accounting Reform: Revising P&L models, depreciation rules, buy-back contracts, and waste-exchange mechanisms to recognise the financial and intangible value of secondary hardware assets. 

In-Use Phase & Asset Management

  • Digital Product Passports (DPP): Exploring asset tokenisation and Digital Product Passports to track component lifecycles and ensure full supply chain traceability. 
  • UX & Productivity: Ensuring user experience (UX) and workplace productivity remain central metrics when deploying refurbished assets. 

End-of-Life (EoL) & Market Readiness

  • Government-Grade Security: Standardising secure data sanitisation software to enable safe resale or donation without compromising government data security. 
  • Internal Carbon Pricing: Investigating internal carbon valuation tools to penalise premature disposal and reward asset lifetime extension. 
  • Market Readiness & Scale: Conducting database analysis on the second-life IT market to evaluate supply versus demand, helping raise regional UK market capability to deliver secondary devices at public sector scale. 

 

Looking Ahead

For government to realise its ambitions, there is a need to move beyond fragmented pilot schemes toward embedding circular principles into business-as-usual procurement and lifecycle management. In support of this, GDSA members work together to identify and review risks and opportunities, and deliver recommendations to government on digital sustainability practices.

Through our ongoing collaboration within the GDSA Circular Economy & Waste Reduction Working Group, the DICE Network+ will continue providing research-backed data analytics, systems modelling, and policy insights to support a resilient, low-carbon digital estate.  

Back to Insights