Celebrating Successes and Embracing Opportunities

2024 was quite a year for Sims Lifecycle Services (SLS). From industry recognition to impactful sustainability initiatives, SLS has continued to innovate, expand, and deliver value to clients worldwide while driving our commitment to the circular economy. Here’s a look at some of the highlights that made 2024 a standout year for us:

Industry Acknowledgement

SLS has once again been recognized as a Representative Vendor in the 2024 Gartner® “Market Guide for IT Asset Disposition.1” We feel this acknowledgment, our fifth inclusion in the Market Guide, highlights SLS’s commitment to delivering world-class IT asset management and disposition solutions that meet the highest standards of data security, sustainability, compliance and value return.

Peer Recognition

Ingrid Sinclair, global president of SLS was named a recipient of the 2024 IM100 Awards by iMasons. As iMasons notes, “The IM100 Awards recognize and celebrate the 100 individuals contributing to the digital infrastructure industry in meaningful and measurable ways.” Sophia Runau, infrastructure engineer, was one of five recipients of iMasons’ Emerging Talent Award, which recognizes exceptional young professionals in the digital infrastructure industry. The achievements of both Ingrid and Sophia highlight SLS’s commitment to advancing innovation, diversity and sustainability.

Continued Commitment to Sustainability

  • Our annual Sustainability and Climate Reports highlight our environmental commitment as we repurposed 6.1 million devices in FY24, a 60% increase from the 3.8 million units we repurposed in FY23. This has resulted in 740 kilotons of carbon emissions avoided.
  • SLS is progressing toward its commitments of achieving 100% renewable energy and carbon neutrality at all Circular Centers by 2025. Renewable electricity is now used for the operation of all SLS Circular Centers, accounting for more than 99% of electricity consumption. Last year we saw a 72% reduction of our operational emissions compared to our FY20 baseline.
  • Sims Limited has emerged as 2024’s most sustainable corporation on Corporate Knights’ Global 100 index. This is the company’s tenth and highest ranked inclusion on the list.
  • The vital role Sims plays in support of global decarbonization is reflected in its recycling of approximately 8 million tons of proprietary ferrous and non-ferrous metals, which helped its customers avoid about 11.6 million tons of CO2-e by using recycled instead of raw materials.
  • In 2024 our award-winning Sustainability Calculator was reviewed and updated for the second time by an academic institution. The calculator’s logic was updated through detailed comparative Lifecycle Assessments (LCAs) using the ISO 14044 methodology for four additional key products. These LCAs allowed us to further refine the database behind our calculator and give full confidence that the results are representative of our global operations.
  • SLS has spearheaded the development of a Circular Indicators tool, which will allow us to measure the circular design of devices such as servers, smartphones and laptops. The vision of this project is to promote circular design and practices by designing an indicator system to measure how circular a device is and to identify how device usage may affect the circular economy.

Expansion of Global and Operational Footprint

  • Our new Circular Center in Son en Bruegel, Netherlands opened in July with an expanded operational capacity, including a fourfold increase in the number of ITAD lines to enhance our processing capabilities and throughput.
    The site includes expanded, dedicated data destruction departments and separate ITAD and data center processing areas, improving the movement of assets throughout the production process. These innovations allow us to optimize the operational workflow while maintaining the secure chain of custody that our clients demand.
  • An additional new site is scheduled to open soon in Slough as a headquarters for field services in the UK, with an expanded fleet of on-site shredding vehicles. The Slough region hosts a significant concentration of data centers, making it one of the country’s primary hubs for such facilities and positions SLS to fully service one of the fastest growing sectors in the world.

Strategic Partnerships

  • In January we announced our collaboration with MOLG to automate the disassembly, refurbishment and repurposing of OCP data center materials. The MOLG system utilizes robotic arms to remove components from devices and features artificial intelligence and proprietary software to learn from the devices it processes.
    A newly installed MOLG robotic harvesting microfactory is set up to pull entire servers from racks, disassemble, harvest and sort parts from servers, complete a full inventory audit and reinstall the chassis back in the server. The microfactory additionally sorts, tests and labels DIMMs for resale.
    We are also working with MOLG to use robotics to disassemble laptops to harvest laptop batteries. This is part of a larger initiative funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy to improve battery recycling programs for consumer products.
  • In 2024 SLS undertook a new affiliation with Cyclic Materials, an advanced rare earth recovery company, to develop an innovative prototype to extract additional value from decommissioned hard drives by recovering essential rare earth elements. This sustainable initiative has recently secured a major equity investment from the Microsoft Climate Innovation Fund.
  • SLS launched the Rack Renew brand to sell pre-owned Open Compute Project (OCP) servers. In an October 2024 blog post, SLS outlined six key advantages of acquiring refurbished OCP servers from Rack Renew, including cost savings, reduction of e-waste, and conservation of resources.

Field Service Success

This fall, SLS completed one of our biggest decommissioning projects in EMEA. Our service technicians decommissioned 141 server racks, over 23,000 drives and nearly 600 network switches for one client. All this was completed in just over 3 weeks. Congratulations to our EMEA field services team!

Looking Forward to 2025

As we celebrate the successes of 2024, we are already setting our sights on the opportunities that 2025 will bring. From continuing to enhance our service offerings and further advancing our renewable energy commitments, SLS is poised to continue leading the way in ITAD innovation, data center services, sustainability, and client value.

We are deeply grateful to our clients, partners, and team members who made these achievements possible. Together, we’re building a future where technology is managed responsibly, sustainably, and securely.

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1 Gartner, Market Guide for IT Asset Disposition, By Rob Schafer, Christopher Dixon, Autumn Stanish, 6 November, 2024

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