CEDaCI is a multinational project to build a circular economy for the data centre industry. Find out why its Circular Economy-ready Server is now listed on the influential Open Compute Project (OCP) database and what this means for the industry. Kristina Kerwin, Research Assistant of CEDaCI, with the support of Silvio Lavendeira, Senior Technician, has designed the CEDaCI Circular Economy-ready Server. This revolutionary product has recently attracted the attention of the Open Compute Project (OCP) and other influential data centre equipment manufacturers.

The OCP, initiated by Facebook, shares data centre product designs and best practices among leading companies across the world including Meta, IBM, Intel, Nokia, Google, Microsoft, Dell, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, NVIDIA, Cisco, Goldman Sachs, Fidelity, and Lenovo. The CEDaCI Circular Economy Sever was presented to the OCP Incubation Committee on 1 June 2023. After a comprehensive validation process the committee voted to recognise the CEDaCI server design and listed it on the OCP database on 18 July 2023.

The CEDaCI Circular Economy Server design introduced several sustainable features such as:

- A set of reusable server enclosures
- Use of fewer materials without compromising performance
- Less non-recyclable, non-durable plastics
- Reduction of critical raw materials in non-electronic components
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Led by LSBU’s Prof Deborah Andrews, the aim of the CEDaCI project is to steer the data centre industry to design standardised, sustainable products to future-proof data centre equipment design and build a critical foundation for a sustainable hardware design. The CEDaCI Circular Economy Server is a crucial step forwards to achieving this ambitious goal.