Knight Frank Ireland – Re-Cycling and Re-Using 

By John Mockler
Managing Director, Knight Frank Management Ireland

As part of Knight Frank’s environmental policies, we advocate the re-use of computers as a better choice for the environment and work with Camara to achieve our objectives.

Camara Education, a social enterprise and charity, specialises  in  the re-use of computers to educate children in disadvantaged schools in East Africa, Jamaica and Ireland. Camara erases all hard drive data to US Department of Defence standard and then refurbishes computers, loads them with educational software and distributes them to disadvantaged schools.

To date Camara has re-used over 25,000 computers in this way, allowing almost 500,000 children to receive a better education as a result.

John Fitzsimons, Camara Education CEO stated that “Camara’s primary focus is on education and the computer re-use solution also provides added environmental benefits by extending the life of computers. We are delighted to work with Irish businesses in re-using their equipment for the benefit of disadvantaged schools.”

250,000 computers are scrapped each year by businesses in Ireland and, on average, computers are disposed of after only three years of use. Through its re-use programme, which is the largest in Ireland, Camara Education is extending the life of computers by five years.

Despite weighing an average of 20kg, over 1.8 tons of raw materials are necessary to construct each computer. The energy used to make a computer is equivalent to powering the average home for two months. Re-use of computers saves resources and reduces carbon emissions.

We at Knight Frank Management Ireland are delighted to work with Camara Education and recommend them for donation of any unused or redundant IT equipment. They are very efficient, prompt and provide all required recycling and data destruction certification. We are also pleased to know that our computers will be re-used in disadvantaged schools.

For more details contact computers@camara.ie or check out www.green.camara.ie