Sustainable Cooperation

Drees & Sommer works with AfB, a company that provides employs people with a disability, to refurbish and resell outdated IT equipment. As part of the cooperation, we are sponsoring one workplace for a person with a disability, while also making an important contribution towards sustainability through hardware remarketing.

Brief description

Location:
Stuttgart

Date:
Since 2019

Duration/scope:
Ongoing direct cooperation

Participants:
The entire IT team, about 65 people

They still work fine. But they are nonetheless decommissioned and carted off by the truckload – in sealed transport containers. AfB (‘Work for People with Disabilities’) collects screens, laptops, mobile phones and printers from Drees & Sommer at regular intervals. Drees & Sommer constantly upgrades hardware to keep pace with the demands of digitization and to optimize work processes. Most of the decommissioned devices are still fully functional, and the partnership with AfB allows them to make a social and ecological contribution. The IT equipment and mobile phones are collected by AfB, refurbished and then resold. Ralf Schneller, head of IT Purchasing at Drees & Sommer is very satisfied with the sustainable cooperation: “Reuse and recycling allow us to protect the climate, environment and resources, and sustainably support a company like AfB.”

As Europe’s largest non-profit IT company, AfB specializes in extending the useful life of decommissioned IT equipment and mobile phones by refurbishing them and reselling them online, in their shops, and locally. As a recognized inclusive company with more than 420 employees at 10 locations throughout Europe, people with disabilities make up some 43 percent of AfB’s workforce. In 2019, AfB made 17 collections from Drees & Sommer, processing 1,148 pieces of IT and mobile equipment with a total weight of 4.8 tonnes. 71 percent of the devices were refurbished for resale. You don’t always have to have the latest laptop or mobile: Dreso colleagues can buy their decommissioned devices back from AfB cheaply and continue to use them as personal devices, thus making their own contribution to refurbishing and reuse.

“The cooperation with AfB provides people with a disability with useful work, and allows us to do something in terms of Corporate Social Responsibility.”

Ralf Schneller, head of the IT purchasing department at Drees & Sommer.