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Microsoft is committed to zero waste operations by 2030.
By 2030, the company announced today , Microsoft plans to stop generating trash from its work. It also committed to cease the use in its 2025 packaging of single-use plastics.
As part of its zero waste objective, it will set up what it calls 'circular centres' so that 90% of its waste will be reused or recycled on-site rather than forwarded to third parties recyclers. The servers in Microsoft data centers are one of the large ticket items that will be recycled internally. The company has also promised to remove waste from its own production process, although its suppliers will not meet the zero waste target of Microsoft.
Last year, 3,189 metric tons of waste was sent back to sites in Microsoft 's largest office complexes. In the next ten years , the new commitment is to bring this down to nil. But e-waste from gadgets made by Microsoft and other manufacturers pose a much bigger problem compared to trash from Microsoft's offices. According to a report published in July, the population worldwide threw out a record 53.6 million tons of e-waste. It is only expected to increase this figure. Today's Microsoft announcement won't do anything with all these piles of e-waste because the company doesn't yet bear responsibility for the products it sells.
The companies of the electronics industry do great work of designing for pleasure and efficiency, but the rapid change in consumption demand is also leading to obsolescence. So the latest coolest product is tomorrow's junk, said Scott Cassel, founder of the non-profit Product Stewardship Institute, following the release of the global report on e-waste in an interview on July with The Verge. In order to ensure their product lasts longer than possible and collect and recycle devices they make in the end of their useful lives, Cassel and others have urged electronic companies.
Other advocacy groups, such as US PIRG, called on Microsoft to oppose proposed "right to repair" legislation that would require companies to disclose information about their products that allow consumers to repair themselves or by means of third parties. Advocates of the right to repair legislation say that they can help maintain products – and prevent them from being disposed of.
In its "right to reparation" approaches, however, it has designed the Surface Laptop and Surface Pro X to make them easier to separate and fix than previous models. Microsoft says that its renewed focus on waste reduction has not changed its attitude.
Brian Janous, Microsoft's overall energy and sustainable development manager, says: We are fully committed to improving reparation of our own products but we also try to balance other areas, such as safety and sustainability, and of course — probably most important to us — privacy and safety.
It's just kind of our first journey step, said Janous. When we learn more on how we actually influence the waste life cycle, there will be much more to come.
Another major environmental objective Microsoft set at the beginning of the year is the zero waste pledge, which will be carbon negation by 2030.
Microsoft has announced in January to tackle climate change by taking more greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere by 2030 and taking on the monumental task of reducing the total carbon dioxide emissions it has ever released by 2050. To deal with climate change,
