The industrial site is gigantic. In Mitry-Compans, in Seine-et-Marne, the French company Evernex has just inaugurated its new computer recycling unit: no less than 6,000 square meters dedicated to recycling, reconditioning and recovery of computer servers whose companies no longer want.
Servers are essential computer equipment that are exclusively dedicated to hosting company data to operate them remotely. They can be used to access files, documents, databases and/or to run a website. They are found in the premises of the companies themselves or by the hundreds in the data centers (datacenters).
Economic and ecological aberration
Problem, while desktops benefit from a fairly efficient recycling and donation channel, end-of-life servers (after 4-6 years on average) usually end up in the landfill, dedicated business recycling specialists , like Paprec, without knowing what to do with it.
Every year, around the world, approximately 2.5 million tons of professional equipment is thrown away.
An economic but also an ecological aberration: recycling this material (and therefore extending its useful life) makes it possible to reduce its carbon footprint, essentially generated (80%) during its manufacture.
An observation that led a French company to respond. Evernex is initially a specialist in the maintenance of these servers (so-called support). In addition to this business, it resells spare parts throughout Europe.
But little by little, the company put together a veritable war chest of 300,000 spare parts: servers but also motherboards, processors, hard drives, etc. The idea then came as a matter of course. Why not rely on this stock to reassemble and refurbish functional servers from machines abandoned by companies?
This idea led a few years later to the creation of this mega-recycling center in Mitry, which required an investment of 2.5 million euros. For the companies that own these servers at the end of their life, “we propose to update it with our parts instead of renewing it,” explains to BFM Business, Marc Barbaret, vice president of sales for southern Europe. “Or we salvage the parts to assemble new servers that will be refurbished and sold to other companies for less than new,” he continues.
To date, the company has 850,000 pieces distributed in 350 warehouses in Europe.
And to detail: “Three scenarios are possible. Either the material is really too old and we only salvage rare materials, but today it is very rare. Or we only salvage parts for our resale activity. Or we reuse these parts for parts maintenance defective”. machines and prolong their useful life, or assemble new machines that will be tested, certified and guaranteed by us”.
Opposite logic to that of manufacturers
Obviously, this approach somewhat defeats the business objectives of the manufacturers of these materials (Dell, IBM, HP, etc.). “They push their customers to renew their servers every five years because they no longer have a legal obligation to keep spare parts, and sometimes they say that refurbishing is not a good idea… We propose to upgrade or renew with recycled ones,” he adds. Marc Barbaret.
20% of SOE spending should go to reform
Evernex also intends to take advantage of the new environmental obligations imposed on companies, in particular the one that obliges public sector players to dedicate at least 20% of their spending to the purchase of reconditioned equipment (AGEC law).
This energizes the process of reconditioning companies “which is not yet in everyone’s head”, laments Marc Barbaret. The reflection of renewing with new equipment is very anchored in the addresses.
Well that the evangelization of companies à ce sujet soit encore à faire, Evernex resells “500 tons of recyclées matériel this year, on the best in Europe, and a dizaine de milliers de nouveaux serveurs par an créés de toutes pièces” affirms The responsible.
Enough to create a true virtuous circle, a circular economy, which is still sorely lacking in the IT industry.
Source: BFM TV
