 Welcome to JSA TV Europe together with the green data movement for this quarter's live event focused on European additional infrastructure sustainability I'm Jean-Marc Lema and joining me today is Bardiwa Monzervi, co-founder and director of business development at Circular Bardiwa, so nice to meet you. I think what Circular is doing, it's fascinating. It's really giving a second life to data center hardware and the market itself and of course with it saving a huge carbon footprint from some of the operators in this space But before we go into the company, let's kind of just set the picture of what's happening in the industry today So what would you say are the three major actions that all operators should take right now in order to expand this standard sustainability efforts? Well, first of all, thank you for having me. It's a privilege to be here and you know, it's also a privilege to be working in the field of sustainability and For those that know me, they know that wherever I go I'm always wearing my eye mason's climber cord badge and of course the United Nations sustainable development goals badge I'm an avid supporter of sustainability and I'm actually really happy to be in in such a sustainability forward industry To answer your question. I think I would say I like to run by the motto of Three main things that we can do as an entire industry is educate innovate and collaborate And within these three sort of main pillars I think I'd like to break it down into three sort of main components of sustainability in the data center and ICT industry For this I look at the value chain So we look at the Suppliers of infrastructure hardware and the construction companies And then we look at the operators of the data centers, which you've got the Coalocation providers and the cloud providers Then you've got the users the the people that actually use the data centers and take space in them I think one thing that we as a Segment really like to do is it put a responsibility on ourselves to be as sustainable as possible And I think we should really celebrate this because the industry has been doing well in finding new methods of being sustainable and Achieving sustainability metrics and setting Reasonable goals to achieve sustainability But I think that the sustainability goes across the value chain as I mentioned earlier I think as the operators One thing that they can do is definitely look at their suppliers How sustainable are the suppliers in terms of the raw materials that are used are the raw materials ethically sourced They are recycled Is the the packaging material used for the Assets that they're developing Green and sustainable Are the transportation methods sustainable? Then of course with the operators we've got a huge amount of components that we look at with sustainability For example energy The data center industry right now Consumes about 200 terawatts a terrible hours of energy on a yearly basis. This is not an insignificant number And when we look at the numbers of the fact that 73 percent of the world's carbon emissions are generated from energy consumption and production This definitely puts a lot of importance on the energy consumption part of data centers And we've been seeing a lot of innovation in this over the past few years There are a lot of projects that are right now using 100 percent renewable energy and in fact some of the projects are Producing renewable energy for each megawatt that they consume I think this is a great method to move forward with sustainability and producing carbon emissions I also think that there are other Sources of energy that we can look at for example nuclear in fact I wrote an article about this just a couple of weeks ago in which I found that Nuclear energy produces 15 grams of carbon dioxide per kilowatt hour As opposed to coal which generates a thousand grams It's it's a huge huge difference. Now, of course when I Drawing it back to saying educate innovate and collaborate We see that when it comes to alternative energy sources like nuclear there's a lot of education that needs to be done And of course a lot of innovation is taking place. We see a lot of Innovation in the space of small modular reactors which are tiny and can be fitted into a data center to power a great part of them The way that I see it if they're using them in submarines below the sea Why can't they be used in data centers above the ground? And of course, I also think There is a part of the responsibility goes on our end users as well as an industry Um as the the providers of the data center space and as the suppliers We can already do so much at the end of the day The the people that are consuming our product, which is the energy and the space are the the end users We should also look into how we can sort of collaborate with them to ensure that the energy that we're providing them Is being deployed? And used as efficiently as possible are the servers configured perfectly? Well, obviously there's no Such thing is perfect, but are they can fade in a way? No, exactly close to perfect. You know, I mean if we have 99.99 percent uptime We can have nice 99 percent efficiency as well, you know No, but I think it's uh, it's a cross industry effort And there are other industries involved in this as well I think the financial industry is is also very much involved in the data center industry in terms of where the funding comes from And of course how the where the the users are coming from And of course we see the legal space here as well in terms of the regulation Now there have been over the past few years some really really good and impactful regulations That have been coming through And of course as an industry we're very self-regulating, you know, we're Risk averse. We don't like it when the outside sources tell us how to operate But it's been really good to see You know the industry coming together the The leaders of the industry coming together and allowing a way for companies to benchmark themselves against one another To then collaborate and to reach those goals And I think to add to the the the the sort of three pillars of educate innovate and collaborate I think we should also celebrate the successes that we achieve amplify the voices Of the successes that we have achieved in sustainability and in reducing our carbon emissions and of course being esg centric To go on a tangent about esg I also think that sustainability is about more than environmental conservation I think there are so many other things that we should look at for example diversity We look at gender diversity age diversity ethnic diversity. We look at enabling sort of developing economies and markets to actually have access to high quality equipment and a high quality of life And I think as the an industry which is so tied into the the core of everyone's lives around the world I think there is a lot that we can do and celebrate in terms of our contributions to sustainability Okay, there's a lot to that sector now. I'll get into the part of the diversity that diversity diversification of talents and the enableness of new New ideas to flourish I'll get into that in a second as well because I think for circular That's actually does fit quite well into the conversation But I mean you touched on a lot of things that are contrasting. So I mean educating, innovating and collaborate I think those three pillars are essential to to anything not just an ability, but are essential to any successful story I think the nuclear side of the conversation again for the education, especially There needs to be a lot more education and we see that not just within the data center space Actually, that is the people might be a little more open to nuclear than maybe the the the next person on the street I think there's a bit of fight back on that sense But there was that start up as well. They developed a nuclear reactor. They can produce one gigawatt of power It's a portable nuclear reactor So that there could be something coming up in in the terms of what you just said It's just how will this be placed because we don't want a nuclear reactor to fall in the wrong hands Oh, no, absolutely. Absolutely. I I agree with you entirely. Look, I'm from Iran. So I'm here with these arguments Yeah, I was not even saying that way, but I was just thinking you just don't want to go into data center It's still a nuclear reactor under something they shouldn't do But I mean, even your your your point around the end users as well in another big discussion I know the infrastructure based on communities quite involved in that How do we not only educate the end user to how they use the infrastructure? And also their carbon footprint because of what they are consuming But then how does that can be cascaded down? To to the eyeballs and then your points around finance and regulation. I mean Two massive massive topics to shifting topics As well finance is changing regulations are just Going to drop on the entry. It's not drop. It's a lot of them are coming in very quickly now So it's going to be very interesting. So I was going to say Another big thing and I mean so going back a few years When we are children we are taught on how to recycle And we say we need to cycle to save the planet and all that but there was something that doesn't seem to happen as much In some of the world's largest industries and the data center space. There is something that also still Is in the early stages. So how important do you think recycling of hardware is? And this is what I think circular comes in because circular that's the circle this ends as s How how important it is that we are doing this now To really give a second life to this hardware Well, I think that the the conversation of waste is a is a really interesting one and To answer your question about the importance the I think What we have is the benefit of time Right now in the sense that our industry it's been around for a while. It's been around since before I was born And it's you know constantly innovating But I don't think that it's become a mature industry yet Compared to other industries such as agriculture and media. We look at the the agriculture industry. They're completely Well, mostly waste-free when you look at mass producers of meat And they essentially to be very crude use every part of the the animal as some kind of produce or byproduct And I think in the data center space and the ICT sector We're sort of really early on and we have the ability to shape these cultures moving forward um I think when we look at the the waste there's four types of waste that I I can think of to stop the top of my head One of them, of course, is that the construction waste which is a bit rarer We don't really see so much construction waste because it's not very often that an entire data center is demolished But to counteract that I mean we could Again new data centers have the the benefit here because they can build sustainability into the the model, right? so for example using Sustainable materials like recyclable concrete recycled and recyclable concrete Again It's not as as common as the other types of waste that we see But I think it's definitely an important place to take a look at probably some other people have some more expertise That could share some some knowledge with you on that one And then we look at the the it waste Which has been gaining a lot of popularity in the past few years and it's been sort of breeding its own multi-billion dollar industry Is what do we do with the servers at the end of their lifespan? now the the average shelf life of a server is about eight to ten years if it's used properly In most enterprise applications a server is refreshed every five years There are various reasons for this energy efficiency and And high quality components and sort of bleeding edge technology are some of them But what do we do at the end of this waste? To give you a statistic 50 million tons of e-waste are generated on a yearly basis and only 20 percent is recycled The rest is sent to landfill and part of it is repurposed Now I like to highlight As part of my one pillar of collaboration I'd really like to highlight that there are some amazing initiatives right now such as it renew ocp Tech buyer sedacy who are really educating the market And providing proactive ways of recycling and reusing these these it assets like the service for example In some cases they take the servers They refurbish them themselves and then they sell it onto the second hand market And all of this because they were able to educate the market on how to do this And then we look at the hyperscalers and some of the r2 certified recycling centers dedicated to stripping down these These it components and providing an accurate way and a sustainable way of recycling them These are great initiatives right now that are taking place in the industry that I think To use your your phrasing will definitely bleed down and should bleed down into the the rest of the industry The next type of waste that we see is is eminy infrastructure waste Which is where surplus is is really active And this is a tricky one because it's When you look at the end of a life cycle of a crack unit or a ups these assets can be used for 10 15 Sometimes 20 years if you're really pretty stretching it But there are cases when the assets are purchased and then they're just not used to their full capacity Because the strategy that the data center strategy of the owner changes for whatever reason What is done with those those assets right now is that they're either scrapped Or just kept in storage for spare part and in some instances that they're recycled I think it's really really important to have a plan for the end of the life cycle of these kinds of assets To have a very clear plan of saying okay We're going to be recycling these assets by the end of year nine for instance And we're going to do it with a recycling partner who is certified in this kind of space Um, and we're going to put this into our business model right now Alternatively at the end of year five, we're going to resell it on the second hand market Which offsets to some extent to some extent offsets scope three emissions Which is a very very big touch point right now And then obviously what this does is it obviously creates more space for sustainability Again, some challenges that we see with M&E waste Is being I say waste but end of life assets being reused in another space Is the inherent reliability? challenges when you know It's mostly You want to have something which you can rely on for the next five to ten years You want to have assets that you don't have to spend too much on in terms of servicing it and repairing it Um, and of course you want to have the most energy efficient Assets, but of course there are times when Something from five six years ago will do the same job Um, the way that I like to see it is as such we look at reliability in so many different aspects of our lives We will as people happily purchase a second hand car Which is driven for 150 000 200 000 miles by someone else or maybe multiple people And when we sit in one of those cars and we put our hands on the steering wheel We're entrusting our lives In one of those one of those machines that we don't know the history of So why can't we apply the same to M&E assets M&E assets where we can see the assets physically in person And we can see documented service history and maintenance records Why can't we do the same and if reliability is an issue Purchase two instead of one. We can definitely build redundancy into this But I also think that there should be more attention given to recycling these assets rather than just Sort of repurposing them the same way that it assets have a lot of recycling initiatives around them I definitely think Now's a really good time To build these recycling initiatives as we see a lot of the legacy data centers going through their refresh rates right now over the next Three years since the past couple of years. I think now's a great time to build these initiatives That's interesting. So how do you reach out to operators and get the pieces from them? Because as you said the next video is going to be interesting because I guess we're reaching their phase now It's been about 10 years Since the big big expansion started In the industry. So I guess we start in the cycle which will not have an end to it because every year It's just another celebration of the last 10 years So how how do you collaborate with them? well as circular To give you in the audience a little bit of information about what it is that our platform is doing we've To simplify it we've built an ebay for the data center industry. We've built a peer-to-peer exchange for secondhand hardware We Don't restrict ourselves from any types of assets We we don't restrict ourselves from training for example IT assets like servers and switches But we see predominantly that we're dealing with M&E assets purely because I think there are other initiatives that are doing this that are robust and They have their place in the market, but when it comes to M&E assets We enable a second life for infrastructure hardware through our marketplace We have a list of global partners About 64 partners in over 30 countries We have a huge audience that we we we market to on a weekly basis and in Sort of support to our growing Platform we actually decommission and remove M&E assets ourselves from a data center operator that Needs to retrofit their facility and in fact, we're currently doing this as we speak um, and that's one way that we help operators to bridge the gap And we take the workload off their hands And make accessing circular economy and contributing to sustainability easier for everyone Okay, and I guess the circle economy is also very good for emerging markets or markets where maybe the capital is not there to build um with the latest technology and the latest assets um in the marketplace How does this circle economy idea? How does this recycling second life? um really help new frontier and developing markets Circular economy benefits everyone This is uh, this is the one thing that I really want to uh, uh shout to the world is that Being circular is beneficial to everyone. Um, we look at emerging markets such as eastern europe and africa For example, africa has the fastest growing digital economy in the world um and Fantastic, we're seeing a lot of uh investment going into africa and a lot of cable landing stations around there Um, same with uh with eastern europe. It's it's a huge emerging market Um, and globally we see about 27 000 people joining the internet on a daily basis um this method of circular economy speaking primarily about the product side and not going into the processor side completely different aspect of circular economy um What this can do is it enables Markets that don't necessarily have the capex to have access to really high quality infrastructure That has been used by established and trusted data centers around the world and it allows them to get online quicker One thing that we see is that some of the lead times for acquiring infrastructure assets are huge Uh to the point where they're sometimes 12 to 18 months This time gap could be a make or break deal for the operator that's looking to acquire these assets If they don't get the equipment on time Their business model might not work properly. So if we're able to provide them High quality infrastructure hardware at low rates at a very very short lead time That enables them to prosper and then also it enables the operator on this side that's selling the assets to be more sustainable to Reduce to some extent to the extent which is reasonable their scope through emissions and of course positioning themselves as a green premium company Which is focused on environmental conservation and circular economy and that's exactly where circular comes in we come to bridge the gap between Companies that have a need to get rid of their well operators that need to get rid of the infrastructure hardware And operators around the world that need to have access to this hardware But don't have the time to wait and don't have the capex to spend right now Okay, and I'm guessing the the even the name circular comes from the idea of circular economy Exactly exactly Well, at least it makes sense because I always like to know where the names come from I think it's an important part of the business to understand the story behind the the name Um, I mean, it's only logical. It's only logical, you know It was the the sort of DNA of circular, so we're Company rather so we decided let's name it circular, you know, it really makes sense. Well spotted. I think it's good And then I was going to ask just to quickly finish because really we are kind of running out of time now But what's very briefly? What's the plans for circular for the next 12 18 months? And how can people find out more information and get involved? Well, just grow grow grow What we uh, of course, I stand by the uh, the three pillars of sustainability that I mentioned earlier, which is educate innovate collaborate Then ultimately we have to celebrate, you know Um, I think what we look to do over the next couple of months or the next year or so is really bring the idea More to market and educate the market about how it's okay to purchase secondhand infrastructure You know, again, I like to make the analogy of the car if we're okay with buying a secondhand car I think it should be the same case with infrastructure hardware Granted, there are it's not as simple and straightforward as that. I make it sound very very simple But of course there are there are different challenges But let's bridge the gap. Let's bridge the gap if if Our diesel fuel tanks are being replaced with hydrogenated vegetable oil to bridge the gap between hydrogen fuel and diesel I think we should also look at bridging the gap between Reusing secondhand hardware and supporting the the sdi is 20 30 goals of having a huge amount of infrastructure resold On secondhand markets and of course we want to make sure that the world understands Sustainability is profitable for everyone and it's a win win win situation for everybody involved Absolutely. So if you want to find out more very briefly, how can they can do so? Well, please for all the the the viewers and of course, Joel, thank you again for having me on It's been a pleasure to speak with you for everyone else Thank you so much for watching and you can definitely visit our website www.circular.tech Tech doesn't short for technology and alternatively Reach out to me directly on linkedin I'm more than happy to to to get together on a video call or Or an email chain or if you're based in London, you can reach out to me And I'm always happy to go and sit down and have a coffee and speak about data centers and sustainability Sounds great. Bardia. Thank you so much for coming on board And thank you all viewers for tuning in to jsa tv live Don't forget to check our social channels for more content and until next time. Happy networking Thank you