Green Friday at seventhings

While on the occasion of Black Friday many people around the world are looking for the best deals, seventhings is committed to finding a way for companies to be more sustainable.

Black Friday is a very valuable event for both companies and individuals and brings a smile to many faces every year. However, from an environmental perspective, this day is the Friday with the darkest shades of black, due to its current magnitude. The attractive Black Friday offers often make it difficult for us to look away and resist. As a result, we often make impulsive buying decisions, acquiring things that we don't actually need, creating vast amounts of waste and unnecessary CO₂ emissions. This behaviour makes it impossible for us to meet the challenges of climate change and achieve our sustainability targets. Companies in particular need to rethink this.

Efficient use of items is one of the ways to cut resource waste and use materials in a more responsible way. For this reason, seventhings is pursuing the vision of a circular economy and is convinced that this very approach will point the way for our economic actions in the future. With the help of the seventhings solution, linear economic activity develops into a cycle that strives for the longest possible use of products and raw materials and thus ensures a significant minimization of CO₂ emissions.

Great importance for resources - more respect for raw materials

The fact that raw materials are finite is no longer a secret. This makes it more important than ever to be aware that everyone can - and even must - do something to reduce their own carbon footprint and make a contribution to protecting our planet. Currently, companies with up to 250 employees dispose of an average of about 85 assets per year. Office furniture accounts for a third of this, with IT equipment making up the rest. Possibilities for recycling, repairing and reusing the items are often not taken into consideration. 

Yet companies can already save 16 tons of CO₂ per year just by passing on half of these fixed assets to employees, associations and NGOs - and without much additional expense. But that's not all: Costs for disposal are also eliminated. At the same time, employees benefit from free or heavily discounted IT equipment or furniture for their homes, for example.

The seventhings vision: Massive reduction of items to be disposed of

This is precisely where the seventhings vision comes in: The linear cycle of use becomes circular with the goal of greatly reducing the number of items that are disposed of. There are 5 concrete starting points for this, which are examined in more detail here:

Share: With seventhings you are always up-to-date on where your assets are located, who is using them and which items not in use are currently available. At the same time, you can easily lend out items. This reduces the need for inventory.

Reuse: Items are no longer needed? They are needed elsewhere. seventhings offers the possibility to manage the simple and efficient transfer of your assets.

Repair: The seventhings Asset Manager identifies and manages defective items in real time. Solutions are developed here that make items usable again internally or, alternatively, release the item to add it back into the external cycle.

Remanufacture: Remanufacturing or refining is a factor in the circular economy that has not yet taken on a weighted role, but which holds great potential for effectively reducing the number of items that have to be disposed of. In the case of technical equipment, this concept is better known as "refurbishing".

Recycle: If the previous options do not come into consideration, the raw materials can be returned to the cycle as secondary raw materials to be used as a basis for industry.

At seventhings, we realize all of these points within the framework of our Circularity Hub. Here you get the possibility to pass on inventory items to employees or to local associations & NGOs without much trouble. The transfer to external companies is also realized with this tool. 

Sustainability: More than just an empty phrase

As a "Social Network of Things", the seventhings fixed asset manager makes all of a company's objects visible. This includes all data associated with the item: Purchase prices, current location, condition, book value, warranty receipts, serial numbers and much more. As a completely digital solution, the seventhings inventory manager works across departments and offers all necessary interfaces, so that inventory can be carried out without paperwork. For our customers, this means, for example, a reduction in time spent by 85%, cost savings of up to 70% and the end of tedious paperwork.

Leading by example: How we are already conserving resources

Data secure & resource-saving in the heart of Germany

seventhings takes responsibility: Just by using the seventhings asset manager, you can significantly reduce your carbon footprint. The data collected via the seventhings app and web interface is stored in one of Europe's largest cloud data centers, Deutsche Telekom AG. These are located in a data center near Magdeburg, which is also the research site of a Fraunhofer Institute to continuously perfect energy consumption and resource efficiency. In addition to the highest possible IT security standards, the TÜV-certified "Zero Outage" program guarantees maximum failure safety - an optimal partner for seventhings' claim!

Our web hosting is also climate neutral. Our website is hosted in the Open Telekom Cloud as well, whose data centers are cooled with outside air and run on CO₂-neutral electricity.

Green electricity in Dresden: seventhings works climate-neutral

Like the data center located just outside of Magdeburg in Biere, where seventhings' data is stored, we also work in Dresden with electricity from 100% sustainably produced energy. For this, we rely on our regional provider SACHSEN ENERGIE and purchase electricity that is produced entirely and specifically for the provider and is controlled and confirmed by TÜV SÜD.

The office move & purchasing new assets

The ecologically valuable use of resources also plays a particularly important role when moving into our new office space. Since January 2022, our seventhings team is located in a beautiful villa in Dresden-Neustadt. Our move in Dresden has already been successfully managed on the premise of passing on inventory items that are no longer needed. Only about 15% of our inventory items were no longer needed. Of this, we passed on 2/3 mostly to employees. Only about 5% of our inventory had to be disposed of. At the same time, we make purchasing decisions in such a way that we buy products with the highest possible recycled content.  

In our villa at Neustadt station, there is significantly more space to put the seventhings vision into practice. While we were still 10 employees at the beginning of 2021, the number has now already grown to 45. In order to continue implementing our ambitious goals regarding the further development of the product, we will continue to grow in 2023. Our goal is not to dispose of any item uselessly and to continue to acquire inventory that has high recycled content.