.svg)
o date in this series we’ve covered Cisco’s sustainability strategy, as well as their commitments to achieve Net Zero by 2040. This week we will focus on the second part of Cisco’s strategy, which is based on evolving to regenerative circular economic model. The Circular Economy for anyone unfamiliar with the term, is a production and consumption model which aims to maximise the lifetime of materials and products through sharing, leasing, reusing, repairing, refurbishing, and recycling.
This approach is more sustainable but allows for continued economic activity and as a result, it is the basis for how Cisco will achieve their ambitious 2024 goals. Below are four ways in which Cisco are aiming to drive sustainability through the circular economy.
- Sustainable packaging
- Pioneering sustainable design
- Simple, secure, and sustainable takeback and reuse
- Genuine Cisco Certified Remanufactured products
Sustainable Packaging: If you’re thinking there can’t be anything too exciting about packaging, then you’re correct – it’s obvious, common sense and a little dull. For anyone who’s familiar with opening a massive box, that contains another box, that has some foam packaging with another box inside, peripherals wrapped in unnecessary plastic, foam end caps to hold the hardware in place and then another layer of plastic wrapping around your tiny Cisco Firepower 1000 Series Appliance … well that particular game of pass the parcel is going to an end. Bundled equipment, foam reduction, thermoform cushioning and removal of unnecessary packaging will be used going forward.
Pioneering Sustainable Design: This relates to the design of Cisco’s hardware products themselves and how they can be made more sustainable to enable customers to meet their own targets. Cisco recently announced that for the first time, members of the Catalyst switch family have been awarded the Energy Star certification in the Large Network Equipment category. A little further digging shows that only three models in total have achieved this certification (C9300-48P, C9200L-48P-4X and C9300-48UXM) and to put this into perspective, for the Cisco Catalyst 9200, that is only two part-codes out of almost 40. Given the amount that Cisco invest in R&D, this seems a little disappointing. For reference, DELL are the only other vendor with Energy Star certification, so disappointing as it may be from Cisco, they are still ahead of the pack.
However, an innovation story with a real impact, is Silicon One. In 2020 Cisco launched the Silicon One chip, which is used in high-end devices such as the Cisco 8000 Series Routers, Nexus 9800, and Catalyst 9600. In comparison to the NCS6000 from 2014, a Cisco 8201 built on Silicon One provided a growth in performance and a reduction in footprint that exceeded Moore’s Law by three x. For illustration, the NCS6008 occupied a full 48 RU rack, while the 8201 required one RU, power draw dropped from 11kW to 415W and backplane capacity grew from 8Tbps to 10.8 Tbps - see here for more details.
Simple, Secure and Sustainable Takeback and Reuse: Cisco are aiming to achieve takeback of 100% of used Cisco equipment. The takeback programme is available in 100+ countries across the planet and via a mobile app in the US, UK, and EU. It’s free, Cisco will pickup, all hard drives are securely wiped, and hardware then goes into the recycling and reuse program. This is obviously a very positive commitment but 100% will be very difficult to achieve, especially as I have a used Cisco 10GBASE SFP+ hidden in my garage that I am not going to tell them about.
Genuine Cisco Certified Remanufactured Products: The Cisco Refresh programme makes remanufactured equipment available for reuse at a lower cost, in many cases a lower lead time, and with full Cisco support. It is a programme that I have used with positive results many times. For more information see friends of Starfish Circularity First.
Next week we will be looking at how Cisco is investing to support innovative climate solutions. Then onto something else, AI maybe (I didn't write that part, the AI must have done it). Please feel free to connect, correct or rant.