Sustainability services director James Pennington ties customer demand to circularity

Lenovo has just launched TruScale Device as a Service (DaaS) for Sustainability, which offers real-time carbon tracking, certified refurbished devices, asset recovery, and offset services.

ESG Global recently reached out to James Pennington, global sustainability services director at Lenovo to ask him three clever questions about ESG metrics and business changes, and how he manages the end-of-life for his own devices.

How many devices do you own, and what do you do with them when they have reached their end of life?

I mainly switch between my Lenovo laptop, tablet and smartphone, the latter of which I bought refurbished. I like to make sure I get the most out of each device before I even think about a refresh. When they reach the end of their usable life, I don’t just leave them in a drawer or send them to landfill. I make sure they’re reused, refurbished or responsibly recycled.

That’s important to me personally and it reflects how we think at Lenovo as well.

What were the top two key drivers behind introducing TruScale Device as a Service (DaaS) for Sustainability?

The first was customer demand. Organisations are increasingly under pressure to reduce their carbon footprint and meet ambitious ESG commitments. In my conversations, they’ve been very clear that they want solutions where sustainability is built in from the start, not something added on later. TruScale DaaS for Sustainability is our way of giving them exactly that.

The second driver was the chance to speed up circularity on a bigger scale. We know from experience that if you extend the life of devices, refurbish them and make sure they’re recovered responsibly at the end, you can deliver real carbon savings. By putting that into a subscription model, we’re helping companies move away from a linear buy-and-dispose approach to something much more circular, while also cutting costs and improving ROI.

When did Lenovo start implementing ESG metrics, and what key changes have you noticed within the business since implementation?

Lenovo has been embedding ESG metrics for well over a decade and they are now part of the way we measure success across the company. We publish an annual ESG report that tracks our progress against a wide range of environmental, social, and governance goals. When it comes to environmental goals, examples include reducing greenhouse gas emissions across our supply chain and increasing the use of recycled materials.

What’s changed most is the mindset. ESG metrics are no longer seen as a separate reporting exercise, today they influence product design, supply chain choices, and even how we deliver services to customers. For example, TruScale DaaS for Sustainability includes a carbon impact portal, which gives customers real-time, device-level sustainability insights to support their own ESG reporting. ESG has become a core business driver.