Microsoft commits to achieve ‘zero waste’ goals by 2030
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Recognizing the urgent need to protect the world’s ecosystems and reduce the carbon emissions that come from the creation, distribution and disposal of waste, Microsoft announced its goal to achieve zero waste for Microsoft’s direct operations, products and packaging by 2030.
The zero waste goal is the third sprint in Microsoft’s broad environmental sustainability initiative launched earlier this year focusing on carbon, water, ecosystems and waste.
Microsoft will reduce nearly as much waste as we generate while reusing, repurposing or recycling our solid, compost, electronics, construction and demolition, and hazardous wastes.
It will do this by building first-of-their-kind Microsoft Circular Centres to reuse and repurpose servers and hardware in our datacentres. It will also eliminate single-use plastics in our packaging and use technology to improve our waste accounting and make new investments in Closed Loop Partners’ funds. And finally, Microsoft will enlist tis own employees to reduce their own waste footprints.
By 2030, it will divert at least 90 percent of the solid waste headed to landfills and incineration from our campuses and datacentres, manufacture 100 percent recyclable Surface devices, use 100 percent recyclable packaging (in Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, OECD, countries), and achieve, at a minimum, 75 percent diversion of construction and demolition waste for all projects. This work builds on our ongoing waste reduction efforts that started in 2008 which resulted in the zero waste certifications of its Puget Sound Campus and the datacentres in Boydton, Virginia and Dublin, Ireland.
