E N D - U S E R I N S I G H T
In terms of responsibility , I think designers have a lot . There are statistics that say the decisions made in the design phase can influence the environmental impact of a product through its life up to 80 %. We need to stop making superficial tweaks and go back to first principles and start designing with end-of-life and mid-life in mind so that we can encourage product life extension , recycling and reclamation of materials to develop closed loops .
Collaboration is often key in addressing complex sustainability challenges . In your experience , how can interdisciplinary collaboration between designers , engineers and other stakeholders contribute to creating more sustainable and circular data centre solutions and what role does education play in fostering this ?
I think interdisciplinarity and collaboration are absolutely essential to develop any truly sustainable or circular solution – it doesn ’ t matter what sector you ’ re working in . Part of the challenge we have in the data centre industry is the speed and scale of sectoral growth . But what ’ s tended to happen is that a lot of people have developed incredibly fine knowledge and deep levels of skills in one particular area without really appreciating the implications of what they do in context . I ’ ve heard colleagues refer to the data centre industry as a sort of silo culture , where sub-sectors work in isolation and don ’ t really know what other people do or other sub-sectors do .
A good example of positive collaboration through the CEDaCI ( Circular Economy for the Data Centre Industry ) project is where we brought together representatives from as many different sub-sectors as possible to work on developing our circular data centre compass through a co-creative process . There was an unexpected benefit where members of the workshops commented they had learned as much from other people as they ’ d learned from us – they gained insight into what other people in other sectors do .
If you think about it , any circular economy is multifaceted ; there are so many different factors which contribute to the industry as a whole . You have to take a whole system ’ s approach to the challenge of circularity and it ’ s about understanding how everything relates to everything else . Whatever activity or action you take , in one part of the network or the product lifecycle , has implications for every other part of the network and the life cycle . Collaboration , whole systems thinking and interdisciplinarity is essential .
In terms of education , it would be great to run more CPD courses for people who are already employed in the industry . One of the challenges would be to get people over the doorstep . It ’ s thinking about how you get people who are slightly resistant to change to come along and find out about what other people do , for example . From a university perspective , I think we ’ re encouraging students who are in design and engineering courses to work with students on other courses – for instance , marketing – for mutual insights into other professions . If students have had experience of interdisciplinary projects in education , hopefully they ’ ll carry that into the workplace and be more confident about encouraging cross-sector work in the real world .
How should eco-fatigue and eco-anxiety among data centre operators be managed and how will this help fuel a better understanding of Sustainable Development Goals ( SDGs )?
This is another big challenge , and it cuts across all industries and education . It ’ s
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