Refurbished IT: the missed opportunity for your next device refresh

Through Technology founder Peter Hanney and associate Rob Knight of Losing the Wires explain why refurbished devices are a missed opportunity for organisations looking to save money, meet Net Zero targets and still give their staff high-quality kit.

Your next device refresh could be 71% cheaper and cut manufacturing carbon by 94%. Yet most organisations still default to buying new.

An outdated reputation

The objections to refurbished tech are usually the same: it's second-hand, possibly unclean, damaged or unreliable. Not something you'd have confidence in when your business depends on it.

That picture no longer reflects reality.

Most businesses offering refurbished devices now put them through a comprehensive process to assess, clean and repair them, often restoring them to almost-new condition. Certification schemes such as Amazon Renewed and Certified Refurbished have been introduced specifically to address those old misgivings.

BSI Refurbished sets the bar higher still. Devices go through a stringent quality control process, including exhaustive testing, component replacement and cosmetic finishing, to meet some of the world's most trusted quality standards.

A step beyond that is remanufacturing, where devices are restored to as-new or better-than-new quality. Some providers only offer older generation remanufactured hardware (up to 11th Gen Intel), but BSI-certified remanufactured devices are now available with 12th and, increasingly, 13th Gen CPUs.

The cost case

New laptop and desktop prices have climbed sharply, driven by steep rises in RAM and storage costs as AI competes for the same components. That makes the financial case for a more circular approach easy to demonstrate.

Take one example:

→ Refurbished: a Dell 14" Latitude with a 12th Gen Intel 10-core vPro CPU, 32GB RAM, 1TB storage, Windows Hello camera, FHD touchscreen and a 3-year Return to Base warranty - around £550 ex VAT.

→ New: a Dell Pro 14" with a 12-core Intel CPU, 32GB RAM and 1TB storage - £1,905 ex VAT, with no touchscreen option.

The refurbished device is more than capable of running today's and tomorrow's productivity applications, at less than a third of the price.

The carbon case

Laptop manufacturing is carbon intensive. Building a new laptop generates around 275kg CO2e. The BSI-certified remanufacturing process generates around 15kg - a saving of 94%.

Across a significant rollout, those figures stack up quickly:

Number of laptops	Approximate CO2e avoided
100	26 tonnes
500	130 tonnes
1,000	260 tonnes

For any organisation taking Net Zero seriously and looking to demonstrate quantifiable progress, this is a straightforward and easily evidenced approach.

No compromise on management, security or support

The devices themselves are the same enterprise-grade Dell and HP models your team already knows.

→ Management. They support Intel vPro and centralised UEFI BIOS management tools, and onboard easily into Microsoft Intune for deployment through Autopilot.

→ Security. They fully support Windows 11 and its enhanced security features, including secure boot, TPM 2.0, core isolation with memory integrity, memory access protection, local security authority protection and firmware protection.

→ Supportability. They'll receive Windows updates for the foreseeable future, and BIOS and driver updates from manufacturers for years to come. The Dell Latitude above has had a BIOS update and several driver updates in just the last few weeks.

Already proven in the public sector

A growing number of public sector organisations have made the switch. DEFRA only buys refurbished mobile devices and is rolling out BSI-certified remanufactured laptops. NHS Trusts are purchasing certified remanufactured and refurbished devices. And many schools and colleges, priced out of new equipment, now rely on certified refurbished kit.

What good looks like

Having bought a number of BSI-certified refurbished laptops and desktops ourselves, we can say they're genuinely almost like new, perform brilliantly and offer excellent value for money.

Unless you absolutely need the latest hardware or specific on-device features, they offer more than enough performance. Specifying 16GB or 32GB of RAM and 512GB or 1TB of storage will help future-proof devices against application and Windows bloat.

Accessing it through your supply chain

Certified refurbished devices are increasingly easy to buy - from Amazon's Renewed programme, to specialists such as Ikonic and Circular Computing, through to larger IT providers like CDW and Softcat.

Ikonic and Circular Computing are worth particular mention as members of the Government Digital Sustainability Alliance (GDSA), working with other organisations to promote circularity and carbon reduction across the UK public sector.

How we can help

Through Technology and Losing the Wires help organisations save significant money and reduce their carbon footprint by:

→ Assessing where refurbished or remanufactured devices are the right approach

→ Building the business case for refurbished or remanufactured over new

→ Working with select partners to procure BSI-certified devices

→ Providing the resources to deploy them - from end user computing strategy and design, through implementation, to post-implementation support

Unless your team genuinely needs the latest hardware, refurbished isn't the compromise option. It's the smarter one.

Planning a device refresh? Talk to us before you sign off the budget at enquiries@throughtechnology.uk.

Thanks to Through Technology's Rob Knight from Losing the Wires for the background information for this article.