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Every office has one. A cupboard, a storeroom, or a box under someone’s desk that slowly fills up with laptops nobody uses anymore. They still switch on. Some of them are barely three years old. And each one still holds a little piece of the company: emails, documents, saved passwords, the occasional holiday photo.
When a device refresh comes around, all eyes are on the new machines. What models, which setup, how quickly they can be distributed. The old ones get only a fraction of that attention. Yet what happens next says a lot about how seriously a company takes sustainable IT and how well it looks after its own data.
That is what circular IT is all about. Buying new devices responsibly is the first step. Keeping each device useful for as long as possible and letting it go safely when its time with you is over is an equally important one.
For most companies, a work laptop follows a routine script. It is purchased, used for around three years, and then finally replaced. In the financial model behind a Forrester Total Economic Impact™ study commissioned by devicenow, owned laptops were assumed to have zero residual value at the end of that three-year cycle.
On a balance sheet, that is where the story ends. In real life, it is where an important decision begins. A device worth nothing on paper can still be a perfectly good machine. Whether it gets a second life, is taken apart responsibly, or simply gathers dust depends on a set of choices. When nobody makes these choices, we can all imagine which way the device’s story will most likely end.
But choices take time. Companies interviewed for the study said their IT teams spent around two hours per device erasing data and decommissioning it at the end of its life. In the composite organization the study models, 10,000 devices reach that point every year. No wonder company cupboards keep filling up with old laptops.
Circular IT starts from a simple idea. The most sustainable laptop is often the one that already exists. Once a returned device has been wiped and checked, it can go one of three possible ways. It can be reused, refurbished and passed on to a new user, or, when it has truly reached the end of the road, recycled so its materials find their way back into use.
Reusing and refurbishing devices after a professional data wipe is one of the most direct ways a company can lighten the footprint of its device fleet. Every refurbished laptop that works well for someone else is one less laptop that has to be produced from scratch and bought new.
Timing is crucial here. A planned refresh rhythm helps avoid emergency replacements and reduces electronic waste. Holding on to devices forever can also create difficulties. In the Forrester study, one interviewee described employees still working on laptops that were six to eight years old, which created security and business continuity risks. Devices that come back on schedule and in decent shape are simply much easier to give a second life.
There is one step no second life can skip. Before a laptop goes anywhere, first its data must disappear.
Careless disposal of old devices can lead to data breaches, regulatory penalties and environmental damage, sometimes all at once. That is why data erasure is the foundation of any circular approach and never optional.
It is also where sustainability and security align. A company that doesn’t trust its erasure process may be tempted to destroy perfectly good hardware just to be safe. A company that does trust it can let that hardware live on. Reliable data erasure makes successful reuse possible in the first place.
Much of this comes down to ownership. When a company buys its laptops, the end-of-life problem falls entirely on them: collecting devices from offices and home workers, wiping them, deciding what happens next, and tracking it all reliably. When devices are provided through Device as a Service, their return is part of the deal from day one.
This is the idea behind devicenow’s Circular Workplace IT. Employees order a device and have it delivered to them. When it is due for replacement, it is collected from them. What happens after that no longer lands on the IT team’s desk. According to the Forrester Total Economic Impact™ study, IT managers using devicenow get assurance that returned devices are refurbished or responsibly recycled in line with international environmental and data security standards, which supports their organization’s sustainability goals. The study models a composite organization based on interviewed customers, so actual results may vary.
devicenow’s own sustainability performance is assessed independently, too. In 2025, devicenow received an EcoVadis Platinum rating, placing it among the top 1% of more than 130,000 rated companies.
The result is a cycle, not a straight line. A device arrives, does its job, comes back, and either starts a new life or is responsibly recycled. And nobody has to go looking for the key to the cupboard.
Whichever partner you work with, a few simple questions will tell you whether they actually practice circularity or only write about it.
Start with the day after. Who collects a device when it is replaced, where does it go, and how long does it sit there with your data still on it? Then ask how they erase data and how you will know it’s been done. Ask how they decide whether a returned device is refurbished or recycled. And ask who, outside the company itself, has taken a close look at its sustainability performance.
A provider that takes circular IT seriously will have these answers ready. If the replies are vague, you might want to re-evaluate or dig deeper.
Remember, somewhere in your building, the cupboard is already waiting for its next delivery. With the right setup, it’ll stay empty.
Source: Forrester Total Economic Impact™ study commissioned by devicenow, January 2026. Results are based on a composite organization and may vary.
Circular IT is a workplace technology approach that keeps devices in use for as long as possible. Instead of buying, using, and throwing away devices, companies return them, wipe them, and then reuse, refurbish, or recycle them. It is one of the most practical parts of sustainable IT, because it works with hardware that already exists.
Before a returned laptop can be reused, refurbished, or recycled, the company data on it is erased so it can’t be recovered. According to the Forrester Total Economic Impact™ study commissioned by devicenow, returned devices are handled in accordance with international environmental and data security standards.
It can make it easier. When one provider manages devices from delivery through return, a company no longer has to piece together what happened to each laptop at the end of its life. The Forrester study notes that devicenow’s handling of returned devices supports organizations’ sustainability goals, and devicenow itself holds an EcoVadis Platinum rating. It is worth asking your provider which information it can share for your reporting.
