Lenovo has launched a new Certified Refurbishment Services program across 14 EMEA countries, giving corporate customers an OEM-branded route to extend the life of aging PCs and other Lenovo hardware instead of pushing everything straight into refresh and recycling. The service adds a structured refurbishment layer on top of Lenovo’s existing Asset Recovery Services (ARS), promising graded refurbishment, NIST 800‑88 data sanitization, functional testing, cosmetic restoration and renewed warranty, all managed through the Lenovo Service Connect portal. The announcement is another signal that large manufacturers intend to own more of the value chain around take-back, refurbishment and ESG reporting.
Inside Lenovo’s circular IT play
On paper, Certified Refurbishment Services is straightforward: customers in markets including Germany, France, the UK, Italy and the Nordics can send Lenovo devices into an OEM-controlled process that offers three tiers of work – from light refresh to full refurbishment – and receive refurbished units back for redeployment with OEM warranty. Lenovo positions this as a circularity and emissions lever, citing research that nearly all EMEA IT decision-makers now factor environmental impact into AI and IT planning, and pointing to external analyses suggesting that extending electronics lifetimes by around 30% can cut annual emissions by up to 20%. The company also says that roughly 70–71% of devices it collects through its broader asset recovery programs are already reused or refurbished for parts, tying the new offer to a story of “OEM-grade” lifecycle extension at scale.
The service is mostly likely about controlling the refresh narrative, not necessirily just about refurbishing devices. ARS and the refurbishment program sit inside Lenovo’s sustainability-solutions portfolio, giving large customers a single Lenovo-branded channel for pickup, data destruction, circularity reporting and redeployment decisions. That positioning aligns closely with EU and EMEA policy momentum on circular electronics, where lifetime extension, product-carbon accounting and documented reuse are becoming harder to ignore in procurement and ESG disclosures.
How much is OEM, how much is ITAD?
Behind the marketing, Lenovo’s model looks like a familiar OEM-front, ITAD-back hybrid. Lenovo highlights internal refurbishment capacity and AI-enabled inspection lines that boost throughput for certain device families, and only Lenovo or “accredited partners” can apply the Certified Refurbished label. At the same time, ARS datasheets and solution pages state plainly that Lenovo “collaborates with a large network of ITAD partners” and “works with the world’s leading ITAD partners to recycle and refurbish your end‑of‑life IT assets,” using R2, e‑Stewards and ISO‑certified processors as accredited downstream suppliers.
In practice, Lenovo owns the customer contract, defines grading rules and refurbishment levels, and controls certification and warranty, while a federated network of ITAD and e‑scrap firms performs much of the logistics, processing and final recycling across 40‑plus markets. That model echoes IBM’s asset recovery and Dell’s asset resale programs: the OEM steps between the enterprise and the secondary market, then leans on specialist partners for execution while keeping the ESG story, device data and brand halo in-house.
Where friction emerges with independent ITADs
For ITAD providers and e‑scrap processors, OEM moves like Lenovo’s present both opportunity and tension. On the opportunity side, Lenovo’s need for certified capacity translates into steady work as subcontracted partners for collection, data destruction, refurbishment and recycling, particularly in countries where Lenovo does not operate its own plants. OEM-backed take-back can also increase overall reuse volumes by making refurbishment more palatable to risk-averse corporate buyers, which in theory should keep more hardware out of shredders for longer.
The frictions come from who controls access and economics. In the world of OEM asset recovery and buyback programs, manufacturers can disintermediate independent ITADs by positioning themselves as the default end-of-life partner in enterprise contracts, especially where fleets are heavily weighted to a single brand. That can lock ITADs out of high-quality, homogenous Lenovo refreshes they previously bid on directly, relegating many to white‑label roles behind OEM portals. ITAD practitioners also argue that OEM trade‑in tables and fixed buyback grids often undervalue used equipment compared with what specialist remarketers can extract through global resale channels, especially for data center and higher-end enterprise hardware.
There is also a battle over narrative and metrics. Lenovo and peers bundle data security guarantees, carbon-accounting claims and circularity KPIs into their ARS offers, allowing them to claim ESG credit for volumes that are, in reality, processed by third‑party ITADs and recyclers. Independent providers worry that as OEM-led programs expand, they may lose both direct client relationships and visibility, even while their plants and expertise remain essential to making those OEM promises real. That leaves many ITADs repositioning toward mixed-brand fleets, complex data-center decommissions, non-OEM gear and services that fall outside manufacturer programs, rather than counting on single-OEM refreshes for growth.
Lenovo’s expansion into certified refurbishment adds to the evidence that OEMs plan to compete more directly with independent ITADs for control of enterprise refresh and take‑back programs. In practice, specialist ITAD and recycling partners will continue to do most of the operational work, while an increasing share of the margin, the lifecycle data, and the recognition for ‘keeping products in use’ accrues to OEMs upstream.