The company says it has also cut its carbon footprint by using Microsoft collaboration technology as an alternative to travel. Tools on its corporate travel reservation site encourage employees to carefully evaluate the business benefit and environmental impact of travel. Since 2007, Microsoft says it has reduced its carbon footprint from air travel by 30,000 metric tons.
Water
The company says its latest air-cooled data centers in Iowa, Ireland, Virginia, and Washington use only 1 to 3 percent of the water required for a traditional data center, and produce no wastewater.
Waste
Microsoft says it reduced, reused, or recycled 99 percent of the waste from its Redmond dining facilities (time frame unknown) by switching to compostable tableware, running aggressive recycling programs, and adapting its menu “to get the most from each item of food served.”
Products
The company says batterly-life improvements in Windows 8 include giving PCs and laptops the ability to instantly switch between low- and highpower modes. It cut standby power use for the Xbox 360 by a factor of 10 since the product’s launch in 2005.
It introduced an environmental scorecard into its Design for Green initiative to evaluate energy efficiency, use of recycled or alternate materials, and minimization of packaging earlier in the product design process.
Suppliers
In FY13, the company completed 278 third-party audits and Microsoft assessments of 149 Tier 1 and high- and medium-risk Tier 2 suppliers, up from 267 audits and assessments of 120 suppliers in FY12.
Last year, the Citizenship Report disclosed critical/serious non-conformances from labor-related violations. In this year’s report, Microsoft expanded the disclosure to a broader range of labor, health and safety, environment, and ethics requirements.
It found 22 critical/serious non-conformances overall, and two of these were environmental – both related to wastewater or solid waste. There were no critical/serious findings for the other environmental categories of permits and reporting, pollution prevention and resource reduction, hazardous substances, and air emissions.
