What Your Old Laptop Could Do Instead of Gathering Dust.

Published: 2024  |  Perspective updated: 2025

A year or so ago I posted a question on LinkedIn that I genuinely wanted the answer to: what do you or your company do with your old tech?

The honest answer, for a lot of organisations, is: not much. Devices get stored in cupboards. They get sent for recycling in ways that effectively amount to disposal. Sometimes they get destroyed for data security reasons. Occasionally they get binned. In almost every case, something useful ends up going to waste — both in environmental terms and in terms of the good it could do.

There is a straightforward alternative. And it also happens to make good business sense.

The device gap is more concrete than it sounds

It is easy to talk about digital exclusion in the abstract. Access. Skills. Confidence. These are real barriers, but they are also invisible ones — you cannot see them from the outside.

The device gap is different. It is concrete. There are an estimated 1.5 million people in the UK who currently lack access to a basic laptop, tablet, or smartphone. And Good Things Foundation estimates that there are 880 million unused items sitting in UK homes alone, some of which could be donated through digital inclusion schemes. The gap between what is sitting unused and what is needed is not a supply problem. It is a logistics and awareness problem.

The National Device Bank, run by Good Things Foundation, exists to close that gap. Organisations donate devices. They are securely wiped, refurbished, and distributed through the National Digital Inclusion Network to people who need them most. By 2024, the National Device Bank had distributed nearly 10,000 devices to people who could not afford their own.

Why organisations have been slow to act

Good Things Foundation research into circular electronics found that many business leaders were simply unaware that device donation was an option. Not opposed to it. Just unaware. The opportunity had not been surfaced to the people with the authority to act on it.

Where awareness existed, the barriers tended to be practical: data security concerns, uncertainty about the logistics of donating at scale, unclear ownership of the decision internally. These are solvable problems — data wiping to government-grade standards is a standard part of the refurbishment process — but they need to be addressed before organisations will move.

The UK government's IT Reuse for Good charter, launched in 2025 in partnership with Good Things Foundation, Vodafone, and Deloitte, exists to address exactly this. It provides practical guidance for organisations wanting to donate devices, commits signatories to measuring and reporting the social and environmental impact, and aims to shift the default from recycling or disposal to reuse.

The business case is real

This is not purely an altruistic argument. Organisations that donate devices through the National Device Bank get something back.

The environmental case is straightforward. Extending the life of a device reduces the carbon cost of manufacturing a replacement. Every refurbished laptop that goes to someone who needs it is one that does not contribute to e-waste, and one less new device that needs to be manufactured. For organisations with net zero commitments and ESG reporting requirements, this is a measurable, verifiable contribution — not a rounding error.

People's Partnership, a financial services business, donated 350 laptops to the National Device Bank and described the environmental impact as a meaningful contribution to their carbon neutral goals — while also noting the social value of knowing devices were going to people and places that actually needed them.

The operational saving matters too. Paying for secure disposal of end-of-life devices costs money. Donating them through the National Device Bank is free for organisations donating more than 50 devices, and the secure data-wiping process is included. What was a cost becomes a contribution — with impact reporting attached.

Good Things Foundation research found that organisations reusing IT equipment consistently described it as hitting multiple targets at once: equalities, environmental sustainability, community benefit. One public sector leader described it as a “double whammy”. That framing resonates. The marginal cost of doing this well, once the process is set up, is low. The combined impact — devices redistributed, emissions avoided, ESG targets advanced, community good delivered — is disproportionately large.

What this has to do with customer experience

There is a connection between device donation and the broader challenge of inclusive customer outcomes that I do not think gets made explicitly enough.

Financial services organisations are building increasingly digital-first propositions. Apps, online portals, digital-only communications. The customers who most need support — those in vulnerable circumstances, those on low incomes, those with low digital confidence — are often the ones least able to access those propositions. Partly because of skills. Partly because of connectivity. And partly because they do not have a device that works well enough to use them.

Donating devices to people who need them is, among other things, an investment in your own addressable market. Customers who can access your digital services are better served and cheaper to serve. Helping more people get online is not separate from the customer strategy. In a genuinely inclusive model, it is part of it.

For every £1 invested in digital inclusion, research suggests a return of £9.48 to the economy. That return does not flow only to charities and government. It flows to organisations whose customers are better able to engage with the digital world — including theirs.

The old laptop in the IT cupboard is not a liability. It is an asset waiting to be activated.