Julie Chenadec from Green IT Amsterdam presented the objectives of CEDaCI to the Belgium Cloud

At present, only 10 percent of the so-called 'critical raw materials' used in data centers are recovered. If we want to further reduce the impact of data centers on the environment and our living environment, the percentage of devices and materials that are reused or recycled will have to be drastically increased. That is why a group of companies, universities and other parties - including Green IT Amsterdam - are starting a research program into circular models for data centers under the name 'CEDaCI'. Organizations from the four most important data center countries of Europe are participating in the project: the Netherlands, Germany, France and the United Kingdom.

"North-West Europe - and in particular the UK, Germany, France and the Netherlands - is the EU's data center hotspot," says Julie Chenadec, project manager at Green IT Amsterdam. “Servers and other hardware in data centers often have a replacement period of 1 to 5 years. This contributes substantially to the production of 11.8 megatons WEEE per year. Those four letters stand for 'Waste Electrical & Electronic Equipment). This makes WEEE one of the fastest growing waste streams in the European Union.

This waste contains so-called critical raw materials (KGs). These KGs are also referred to as 'critical raw materials'. These are raw materials that are of great technological and economic importance and the supply of which is vulnerable to interruption. Read more