This feature appeared in Oxygen 250 2025. IT Channel Oxygen members can download the full report here (membership is free).
The Oxygen 250 kept its pedal to the metal on sustainability in 2024, despite mixed progress across the wider tech sector.
Here we round up five big wins from across the 250 firms featured in the report.
1. Circular shape shifters
IT hardware takeback and reuse efforts accelerated among some of this report’s largest players in 2024.
3rd-ranked Computacenter set the tone in March by linking exec bonuses to an ambitious new 1:1 device recovery target (it currently takes back fewer than one in 6 items that it sells).
“Over the next three or four years I can close these gaps, and I think that’s making a difference,” CEO Mike Norris told IT Channel Oxygen.
On a similar note, 1st-ranked Softcat unveiled a new 2034 kilogram-to-kilogram takeback aspiration in September, while 7th-ranked SCC also announced it is aiming to quadruple throughput at its newly opened WEEE recycling facility.
81st-ranked Agilico claims its decision to launch its ‘Agilico Zero’ brand of refurbished printers fuelled a “significant” rise in profits in its latest accounts, meanwhile.
2. B Corp embrace
B Corps are becoming a more common sight in the channel, with a few more top resellers and MSPs either achieving – or committing to achieve – the notoriously exacting social and environmental sustainability certification.
238th-ranked Zenzero became a B Corp in September, while 232nd-ranked Calligo set a goal to attain the status by the end of 2025. 49th-Kerv, meanwhile, is another currently “on a journey” to reached the B Corp promised land.
Oxygen 250 firms that achieved the status the previous year include 58th-ranked Qodea and 52nd-ranked Natilik, the latter of which invited IT Channel Oxygen to its London HQ in May for a 15-month B Corp progress report.
“With B Corps, you can’t fake the audit. And if you’re serious about it, you’ll keep trying to improve it. And that’s what we’re trying to do here,” Natilik UK CEO Alastair Rudman told us.
3. Decarbonisation dash
The year also saw resellers and MSPs make continued inroads into cutting their carbon footprints.
4th-ranked Bytes Technology Solutions became the latest UK partner to have its decarbonisation goals validated by the Science Based Targets initiative in June (following in the footsteps of rivals including Softcat, Computacenter and 10th-ranked Telent).
In the near term, it has committed to reducing its absolute Scope 1 and 3 emissions by 60% and 50% by 2031, respectively (and maintaining a 100% absolute reduction in Scope 2 emissions by 2029). By 2041 it plans to slash Scope 1 and 3 emissions by 90%.
243rd-ranked Pacific Computers was among the smaller firms taking decisive action. It claims it implemented changes to its logistics that have cut its Co2e emissions by 42% from its 2021 baseline year.
4. Customer carbon cuts
While Oxygen 250 firms have been busy tackling their own carbon footprints, many are also increasingly helping their customers do the same.
In October, 55th-ranked Logicalis said it wants to be “the sustainable IT partner of choice in the UK and Ireland”. Part of this is about embedding sustainability principles into the projects it architects for customers, UK&I CEO Neil Eke says.
45th-ranked Storm’s growth into sustainable IT solutions “continues to be one of the cornerstones of our strategy”, while 46th-ranked ARO’s sustainability division generated £2.2m of its £107m 2023 top line. Noting that the building industry generates 39% of annual global Co2 emissions, 71st-ranked Symetri last year launched an Autodesk-based sustainable building design solution, ‘Naviate Zero’, meanwhile.
