Every organisation refreshes its IT. Laptops get swapped, phones get upgraded, and the old kit potentially gets boxed up and left in a cupboard. Most refresh cycles miss the obvious next step: the device you have just retired usually has years of life left in it, and in the right hands it does not just avoid landfill. It changes someone’s prospects.
Around 1.7 million UK households still do not own a laptop, tablet or desktop, and close to 8 million adults lack basic digital skills. Repurposing surplus corporate tech is one of the most direct ways a business can chip away at those numbers. Here is what that looks like on the ground.
A student who can finally do their homework
Plenty of young people fall behind for a reason that has nothing to do with ability: there is no working device at home. Homework moves online, lessons stream, revision sits behind a login, and they cannot reach any of it. Some are juggling caring responsibilities or complex needs on top. A wiped, refurbished laptop closes that gap overnight. Organisations like IntoUniversity put repurposed devices to work in local learning centres, helping disadvantaged young people get results they would otherwise be denied.
A jobseeker who can actually apply
Try building a CV, sitting an online assessment or prepping for an interview on a cracked phone screen. It does not work. Digital access is the price of entry to the labour market now, and without it people stay stuck. Repurposed computers routed into employment programmes and community centres, like those run by Pecan, become the stepping stone back into work.
An older person who is not cut off
Isolation is not only physical. For many older adults, “everyone’s online now” means being quietly left behind, from GP bookings to a video call with the grandkids. A simple, pre-set-up tablet, plus someone to show them how it works, rebuilds a connection to the world that had started to close.
Someone breaking the cycle of homelessness
Losing a stable home often means losing touch, with family, with services, with the systems that could help. A device and a connection can be the difference: a way to reach a case worker, find a programme, reconnect with people who have dropped out of view. Charities such as St Mungo’s build exactly that into how they help people off the street.
You already have the raw material
None of this asks you to buy anything. It asks you to rehome what you are already replacing. When we worked with The Kemnal Academies Trust, we securely wiped and refurbished surplus IT across their network and got working devices back into students’ hands, extending the life of the kit and stretching every pound of their budget further. Collect. Wipe. Refurbish. Rehome.
That last word is the point. As the exclusive technology partner powering the Good Things Foundation’s National Device Bank, together committed to delivering 85,000 devices to digitally excluded people, we make sure retired corporate tech reaches those who need it most. Securely, traceably, and with the data gone for good, wiped to NIST 800-88 and IEEE 2883-2022 standards using Blancco.
The digital divide is big, but it is not abstract. It is a working laptop sitting in a cupboard a few miles from a child who needs one. You are going to retire that device anyway, and the longer it is left in that cupboard, the less value and capacity for impact it retains. Let’s make it someone’s new beginning.
Old tech. New beginning. If your organisation is refreshing its technology this year, talk to us about where the old kit goes next.