- Microsoft says it’s a year early for its server recycling and recycling target
- Rare ground mineral and metal extraction has been shown to be key
- Circular Center reused shutdown hardware
Microsoft says it is ahead of the goal of its quest to become a zero-waste company-a most important aspects of its sustainability goals-but it is not there yet.
In a blog post, Azure Hardware Confirmed Systems and Infrastructure CVP Rani Borkar, that the company has now reached a recycling of 90.9% and recycling frequency for servers and components from 2024, which easily exceeded its 2025 goal of 90% and came a year earlier.
The milestone brings Microsoft, who recently celebrated his 50 -year anniversary, one step closer to being carbon negative, water positive and country positive by 2030.
Microsoft’s data centers are almost waste -free
Borkar explained that the company had exceeded its goal by piloting the sustainable extraction of rare earthen soil minerals and metals from HDDs on scale, reducing the need for new materials such as neodymium, gold and copper.
The extraction process involves the acid -free solution of shredded HDDs that are said to deliver a 90% high -yield recycling rate.
The company also boasted a reduction in emissions of 95% compared to traditional mining and processing practices, highlighting the broader recycling of cross -cutting categories may have to help Microsoft achieve more than just one of its sustainability goals.
Microsoft has also continued to expand its circular centers globally with the aim of treating and directing closed servers and hardware components for their next usage time – Tings Ike Academies that educate data center technicians.
Its first circular center, located in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, opened by 2020. Five more across the United States, Ireland and Singapore has been following since then, and the company has already prepared plans for new places in Cardiff, Wales; New South Wales, Australia and San Antonio, Texas.
The third change that has enabled Microsoft to reach the important 90.9% rate one year early was the introduction of recyclable packaging solutions for transporting data center hardware to enable easier recycling of the street.
Borkar claims that more than 30,000 server racks have been treated through Microsoft’s Global Packaging Recycling Program, derived more than 2,500 tonnes of waste from landfills.
That said, every step taken in the right direction is apparently greeted with a step backwards. Microsoft’s 2024 Serial Compilation Report describes how greenhouse gas emissions and electricity consumption have climbed annually since at least 2020, indicating the colossal effect of powerful cloud computing and artificial intelligence data centers.
