There are so many ways to make progress towards your sustainability goals. You can source renewable energy to run your facilities, use more energy-efficient technology within those facilities, reduce the volume of plastic used in your packaging, allow employees to work from home to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with the commute. The list goes on and on.
But one thing many companies forget to put on their list is purchasing remanufactured equipment.
How can Remanufactured equipment support your path towards sustainability?
Great question.
Cisco certified remanufactured equipment meets the same quality standards that you would expect from equivalent new Cisco products, and the answer is really about resources. It’s about what it didn’t take to make the remanufactured product that would have been required to make a new one.
You see, remanufactured products in general require just a small fraction of the energy, raw materials, and water it would take to build a new product from scratch. Think metal. Think paint. Think cabling and plastic. Mining those resources, refining them, shipping them to our manufacturing facilities, molding them into the shapes we need, building processors, building ports, creating the switching fabric…all require energy and materials. But just think how much less of that is needed if you start with a product that has already been built once and simply needs to be updated or repaired. The material is already there for the most part. So, now instead of doing the mining and manufacturing, what we’re doing is making small repairs and updating software. That doesn’t require much material at all. And the remanufactured product goes on to have a second life—or third, or more—which is a key concept at the heart of the Circular Economy.
Do we recommend you use remanufactured equipment for all your networking needs? Absolutely not. Some of Cisco’s most exciting sustainability progress shows up in our newest products, which are not yet available as remanufactured. These include our Nexus 9800 Series switches which, in Cisco lab tests, were shown to be 1.6 times more efficient than the 400G GX-based Nexus 9500 series1, and the Cisco 8201 router, which uses Cisco’s own Silicon One chip and consumes 96 percent less energy per year than the NCS 6008, while supplying 35 percent more bandwidth.2
With that in mind, what we recommend is a blended approach to technology purchases—one which uses cutting edge technologies in the parts of your infrastructure where you’re seeking performance and efficiency gains, and remanufactured equipment in places where legacy products are meeting your needs just fine.
When you’re ready to drive circularity and reduce natural resource use by incorporating remanufactured equipment into your sustainability plan, ask your account manager about Cisco Refresh. Cisco Refresh is the only place you can buy certified remanufactured Cisco equipment. It’s attractively priced, ships fast, and is backed by the same Cisco warranty and service options as the equivalent new product. There are over 7,000 SKUs to choose from, including the networking, security, and IoT technologies required for maximum performance in even the most demanding environments.
If you don’t have any remanufactured equipment needs at the moment but would still like to participate in the Circular Economy, check out our Takeback and Reuse program. It allows you to return end of life Cisco hardware at no cost and with minimal effort. It’s simple, secure, sustainable, and currently available in over 100 countries globally.
1 Cisco 2022 Purpose Report, p.47
2 Cisco 2021 Purpose Report, p.80
Additional Resources
Cisco Refresh home page
Cisco Takeback and Reuse page
Cisco Circular Economy home page
2022 Cisco Purpose Report
Cisco ESG Reporting Hub
