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>> We produce too much waste.
Every year, humans create 55 billion tons of waste on earth,
and most of it is not properly disposed of.
This puts our planet's ecosystems and
public health at risk while also contributing to
increased greenhouse gas emissions and
contaminating our air, soil, and water.
While waste comes from many sources,
electronic equipment presents
the fastest growing challenge around the world.
With e-waste now accounting for
70 percent of all hazardous waste and landfills,
we believe the tech sector has a responsibility to help.
This is why Microsoft is committing to operating
as a zero-waste company by 2030.
As our customers' demand for Cloud services continues to soar,
our network of data centers is also expanding.
Today we maintain more than three million servers and
related hardware in more than 160 data centers.
Servers last about five years on average
which has the potential to add up to a lot of waste.
We believe that we can improve
our current waste reduction efforts and
take an innovative approach
inspired by the concept of circularity,
all managed by modern Cloud technology.
We're setting up circular centers on our data center campuses,
meaning we'll soon be able to process e-waste right on-site.
By using techniques such as intelligent scheduling,
powered by machine learning to quickly and
efficiently sort through whole devices and their parts,
we are increasing the circularity of
those assets while also reducing carbon emissions.
Based on early piloting,
we're on track to increase our reuse of servers and
component parts to 90 percent by 2025.
Our big goal is zero-waste by
the end of the decade and
our circular centers will play a big role in getting us there.
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