Embracing Innovation - Renew IT (2024)

Renew IT’s innovation shined during and throughout the current COVID-19 pandemic through transitioning from our traditional business model of purchasing used IT Hardware across the country to sourcing and supplying. Used, refurbished and new IT Hardware was sourced locally and internationally to ensure organisations could shift to a remote model with ease, regardless of the extensive supply-chain delays from manufacturers.

As the business grew from a traditional ITAD Wholesaler, Renew IT’s core foundations of customer experience and providing sustainable solutions drove Renew IT’s success during this period. Some case studies are noted below, reflecting this shift.

As states across Australia entered into extensive lockdowns, businesses were forced to abandon their offices with little to no warning. With offices emptying, the average Australian balanced transforming their kitchens into offices and became part-time teachers to their home schooling children.

There were many issues such as workplace mobility and businesses heavily relying on desktops, workstations and local on-premise infrastructure. With the supply chain overwhelmed globally due to factory closures due to COVID-19 outbreaks, supply could not meet with the demand. Renew IT saw this as an opportunity and began re-deploying refurbished hardware nationally to our eco-system of end user clients.

By supplying short-term rentals and device imaging of laptops, businesses could reduce their physical footprints at homes and revolutionise how they operate. What followed next was the supply of general workstation equipment such as monitors, keyboards and mice. This supported specific unit requirements and reputable test and tagging of all devices to ensure Workplace Occupational Health and Safety (WOHS) was not compromised and would experience the same seamless translation.

Renew IT formed partnerships with organisations such as TNT and Toll. Together we have started to re-deploy hardware to residential addresses and provide secure contactless deliveries ensuring recipients were not waiting all day for delivery and received the equipment without any discrepancies.

Also during the pandemic, Renew IT assisted State Health Organisations in New South Wales and Western Australia. Medical staff who could no longer operate out of the hospital daily needed assistance in mobilising so they could work from home. Google approached Renew IT to offer a solution whilst ensuring the healthcare systems remained unaffected.

Due to the global shortage of Chromebooks, Renew IT utilised Google’s new software neverware(TM) to convert pre-loved laptops into Chromebooks. Promoting environmental sustainability through re-use. Renew IT staff across Western Australia, and New South Wales worked tirelessly, converting hundreds of laptops, upgrading components and completing safety checks and upgrading them to Chromebooks, meeting the standard to support the extensive usage they’d face for the foreseeable future. Renew IT began delivering devices across Western Australia and New South Wales through internal resources and providing accurate delivery times to ensure essential workers’ valuable time was utilised effectively. This program was a huge success with the devices still in use, providing a sustainable solution for customers.

One of the most innovative programs we run here at Renew IT is Surfacemine. A partnership with the University of New South Wales and Professor Veena Sahajwalla. Veena built the worlds’ first e-waste microfactorie™. Using in house technology built by her and her team, they have designed a process flow to break down e-waste materials in a sustainable way, creating plastic feed stock and metal oxides for manufacturing.

Renew IT were so impressed with this technology we began funding a research and development program called SurfaceMine.

Surfacemine’s focus is to process e-waste plastic and metals. IT Hardware that is made from high grade plastics and rare earth, high value metals. Using IP that allows us to separate materials that have already been through a refinement process already we can quickly process this into “locally sourced” feedstock to support Australian Manufacturing.

By shredding hard drives you cross contaminate the raw materials creating waste. We have a large focus on cobalt as 80% of the worlds cobalt is mined in the Congo, These mines are extremely dangerous and children as young as 8 years of age are being sent into very deep unsafe mines to extract this raw material that is commonly found in computer hard drives and smartphones.

Surface Mine aims to prevent the unethical mining of metals such as cobalt and find better ways to mine materials that already exist on our planets surface from being previously extracted and used.