With the globe fast becoming one village in a bid to meet the ever-rising menace of climate change and pollution, sustainability has become the field of interest for every business household. Traditionally linked with industries such as energy, agriculture, and manufacturing, technology is also stepping forward to tackle its own carbon footprint and searching for alternative ways in the hope of meeting sustainability.
Technology firms, especially electronics, software, and telecommunication firms, have an enormous environmental footprint. From energizing data centers to e-waste of obsolete products, the environmental footprint of technological advancement is gigantic in scale. Yet a few of the world’s biggest technology firms are making their environmental footprint count, pushing the boundaries of green innovation, and creating technologies that fight climate change and facilitate a circular economy.
We can see here how leading technology firms are reaching out to sustainability, from cleaner energy and green supply chain initiatives to clean technologies and product design innovation. By leading the way, their actions themselves serve as an example for the entire global economy to build a cleaner world.
1. Renewable Energy Commitments: Powering the Future through Clean Energy
One of the most significant tech contributions to sustainability is in harvesting renewable energy. Leading tech companies have come to see that their offices, factories, and data centers all consume massive amounts of electricity—most of it produced by fossil fuels—and thus have massive carbon footprints.
Google: A Renewable Energy Pioneer
Google is leading the charge for the tech industry to switch to renewable energy. In 2017, the corporation was the world’s topmost companies to become the first in offsetting all of its worldwide energy consumption by using renewable power. It is a procedure through which for every unit of power Google uses in operations, it buys one unit of equal amount of renewable energy produced by the sun and the wind. Google becomes history by working with the world’s utilities to supply clean energy even in regions where there is no clean source. Microsoft: Carbon Negative by 2030
Microsoft will be carbon negative by 2030. That is, within the next decade, the company should be able to sequester more carbon dioxide from the air than it releases. In a bid to do this, Microsoft is investing in renewable energy, innovating new carbon capture technology, and lowering its direct carbon emissions. Besides committing to green energy, Microsoft is working on methods to lower supply-chain emissions and advocating like-minded green policies by business partners.
Amazon: 100% Renewable by 2025
Amazon, the world’s largest tech giant, is making efforts to run its business on 100% renewable energy by 2025. Amazon is already the world’s largest corporate buyer of renewable energy and is investing big time in solar and wind energy initiatives to make its vision a reality.
Amazon’s commitment to sustainability also manifests in its efforts to electrify the delivery vans, reduce packaging waste, and develop more efficient data center technology. Apple: 100% Carbon Neutral
Apple has led the green technology for over four decades. Apple recorded a milestone to become the world’s first carbon-neutral value chain from corporate to manufacturing, shipping products, and stores in 2020. Apple’s sustainability is based on its vision of using 100% recycled and renewable material for its products, like recycled aluminum and rare earth elements, and renewable sources for powering its supply chain.
2. Green Product Design: Green Materials and Circular Economy
Outdated or upgraded technology products generate immense electronic waste (e-waste) that commonly finds its way into landfills and pollutes the environment. To address this, technology corporations have embraced the principles of the circular economy to extend product lifespan, minimize waste, and promote reuse and recycling.
**Apple’s Recycling Breakthrough: Daisy and Liam
Apple has also improved green product design greatly through the use of its recycling robots, Daisy and Liam.
Daisy is a cutting-edge robot that dismantles old iPhones and deconstructs their components for recycling. The robot recycles around 200 iPhones an hour, recovering the precious material such as gold, aluminum, and cobalt that can be used to make new products. Apple’s attempts to design its products in a circular manner are just one part of a broader attempt to drive the extraction of new raw materials into extinction, and minimize the environmental impact of raw material extraction. Fairphone: A Moral, Modular Smartphone
Less flashy European firm Fairphone is disrupting the tech industry’s long-standing practice of planned obsolescence by designing smartphones that can be repaired and upgraded with ease.
Fairphone 4 also has modular design with its capability for users to change every component of it such as battery, camera, and screen. In addition to shortening a product’s lifespan, it curbs e-waste via part replacement or recycling without them being thrown away. Fairphone also uses socially responsibly sourced parts as well as offering fair working conditions in its whole line of supply products. HP: Products from Recycled Materials HP is also a firm that has moved to minimize its environmental footprint through sustainable product design.
HP has committed to using recycled plastic in its products and has also launched a line of laptops and printers made of recycled plastic collected from the world’s oceans. Besides eco-friendly materials, HP has also launched take-back initiatives where customers can return previous models to be recycled, taking the circular economy even further. 3. Carbon Offset Programs: Redressing Emissions
While tech replacement is a big part of sustainability, many of the tech firms also know that they have to offset their non-renewable carbon emissions. They offset their carbon emissions through carbon offset schemes that enable companies to invest in projects that avoid or sequester greenhouse gases and thus balance their emissions that are not offsettable.
Google’s Carbon Offsetting Initiative
Google was a major advocate of being carbon neutral and used the carbon offsetting tactic as an all-encompassing strategy of sustainability.
By making investments in forest conservation, renewable energy, and methane capture projects, Google offsets emissions that couldn’t be minimized within its operations. Google even created sophisticated machine learning algorithms to get the maximum effect from carbon offset projects in a manner such that its investments are actually contributing to the fight against climate change. Microsoft’s Carbon Removal Investments
Microsoft’s carbon negative strategy involves massive investment in carbon removal technology research and development. Microsoft is a pioneer in pilot initiatives on direct air capture of carbon such as large tree planting initiatives and direct air capture (DAC) technology. Microsoft is a pioneer in long-term solutions as well through collaboration with startups and universities to create scaled-up carbon removal technology.
4. Green Software Development: Reducing Computer Power Consumption
Growing demand for online services translates to growing power to drive the infrastructure where they are hosted. Cloud computing services are hosted in servers and consume the most power. The software development industry is now developing energy-saving software that minimizes the level of computing resources required to drive these services.
Google’s Energy-Saving Algorithms
Google is tackling sustainability along with renewable energy by making its data centers and software more energy-efficient in terms of taking less power. Google developed AI software algorithms that change the cooling machinery of data centers dynamically in an attempt to conserve energy. The cooling machinery even predicts the level of power required by data centers depending on what is being processed and sets new efficiency records in conserving electricity.
Netflix: Energy-Saving Video Streaming
Netflix is also a tech firm and has tried to minimize the environmental footprint of its operations.
Video streaming services have been observed to use a lot of bandwidth and energy, particularly if it is an HD stream.
Netflix created algorithms that can dynamically adjust video quality depending on the customer’s internet speed, in an attempt to provide content seamlessly without encroaching on customers’ experiences. The company has also tried to restrict its own data centers’ power usage by using power-efficient centers. 5. Sustainable Supply Chains: Ethical Sourcing and Transparent Practices Sustainability isn’t just product design, it’s product sourcing, manufacturing, and delivery. Most tech firms are making every effort to green their supply chains, i.e., exercising fair labor practices, waste minimization, and enhancing workers’ conditions in developing countries.
Fair Labor Practices at Intel
Intel has tried to promote ethical labor practice and supply chain transparency. Intel pledged to source materials such as cobalt and conflict minerals from suppliers who satisfy rigorous environment and human rights standards. Intel engages third-party auditors to ensure that the suppliers are following ethical labor practices such as payment of fair wages and appropriate work conditions.
Supply Chain Transparency at Tesla
Automotive company Tesla has also tried to render its supply chain sustainable.
It tries to obtain conflict-free material such as cobalt and pressurize its suppliers into adopting green policies.
Tesla’s utilization of electric vehicles is also an important part of its sustainability drive since electric vehicles emit significantly less carbon than traditional gasoline-powered vehicles. Tesla gigafactories are also being rendered energy-efficient with the optimum use of renewable energy and utilizing less energy, reducing their ecological footprint. 6. Facilitating Eco-Friendly Consumption Behavior: Educating and Energizing Consumers Technology firms are also recognizing the importance of empowering customers to make ecologically sound choices. There are some companies that are taking it an extra step by informing their consumers about how they can minimize their environmental impact by promoting sustainable consumption patterns of repairing, reusing, and recycling the products.
Apple’s Environmental Impact Reports
Apple provides the customers with a better form of information about the environmental performance of the products in terms of environmental impact reports. It is based on product materials use transparency, power consumption transparency, and carbon emissions transparency. Apple has also made efforts to facilitate better recycling of out-of-business products through exchange programs and trading systems and enhance close-loop utilization by using business products to facilitate the circular economy.
Google’s Green Search Features
Google has also inducted consumers into greener alternatives through features such as green directions on Google Maps and the capability to search for eco-products. Google even encourages conservation behavior on its “Sustainability at Google” page, providing tips on minimizing carbon footprints by consumers.
Conclusion: A Greener Tech Industry in the Making
Gazing ahead, it is evident that the technology industry is at the forefront of the world’s movement toward global sustainability challenges.
Through developing renewable products, green product design, carbon offsetting, and open supply chains, the world’s most powerful tech communities are on their way to having a lighter footprint on the world.
Although much is yet to be accomplished, it’s all laying the ground for a cleaner, responsible tech world that keeps its bottom line and creates a safer world for humans to live in generations ahead. The technology world is needed to keep pressing and brainstorming towards attempts at advancing lines of what could be achieved toward the mission of sustainability. Green technology, green purchasing and reduction programs of wastage will benefit the companies and also act as a role model to other sectors. To become sustainable, the technology sector can be set to not only modify the way people live and work but modify the world and make it a better place to live in as a green world.