WIREDGOV

Last year, public sector organisations across Wales took more than 22,000 laptops and phones out of service. Just 3,144 were donated for reuse. The remaining 17,633 were incinerated, landfilled, lost, damaged or written off.

These figures, obtained through Freedom of Information requests, do not simply reflect operational waste. They reveal a deeper problem: the absence of any shared approach to what happens when public sector technology is no longer needed. Some organisations chose to act. Monmouthshire County Council donated 2,206 devices. Cardiff University redistributed more than 1,000. Others – including NHS Wales – reported none. There is no common process. No clear baseline. No policy in place to ensure that viable devices are considered for reuse, let alone passed on.

This would be concerning at any time. But it is particularly stark against the backdrop of digital exclusion. While this equipment was being discarded in Wales, more than 19 million people across the UK remained without reliable digital access. These were not abstract numbers. They represented pupils, jobseekers, carers, and older adults – all still shut out of the digital world for lack of tools many assumed were no longer needed.

“This is not simply a question of waste – it is a question of whether we are willing to design systems that respond to need,” said Elizabeth Anderson, CEO, Digital Poverty Alliance. “Public sector technology can and should serve a second life. But unless reuse is expected, enabled and tracked, that opportunity will continue to be missed.”

At the Digital Poverty Alliance (DPA), we have seen what structured, intentional donation can deliver. Through Tech4Families, delivered in partnership with Currys, and through Tech4YoungCarers and Tech4Youth, we have worked with trusted local partners to provide thousands of households with donated laptops and targeted digital support. That experience now shapes our leadership of the UK Government’s national device donation scheme – a core part of its Digital Inclusion Action Plan, designed to ensure that unused government laptops are refurbished and redistributed to those who need them most.

The FOI data makes one thing clear: without a coordinated, nationwide approach to reuse, too many devices will continue to be discarded without consideration, and too many people will continue to be left behind. This is not a resource gap. It is a structural one.

We are calling for national guidance that embeds reuse across the public sector – not as a recommendation, but as a standard. Because the problem is not that these devices are gone. It is that no one expected more from them.

Donate your unwanted devices to the DPA

The DPA has deep, proven experience delivering large-scale device donation programmes that get laptops into the hands of the people who need them most – quickly, securely, and with support that makes a difference.

Donate you device here