- Microsoft says it is a year early to its server reuse and recycling target
- Rare earth mineral and metal extraction has proven key
- Circular Centers repurpose decommissioned hardware
Microsoft says it is ahead of target on its quest to become a zero-waste company – one of the key aspects of its sustainability goal – but it isn’t there just yet.
In a blog post, Azure Hardware Systems and Infrastructure CVP Rani Borkar confirmed the company has now reached a 90.9% reuse and recycling rate for servers and components as of 2024, slightly surpassing its 2025 target of 90% and getting there one year earlier.
The milestone brings Microsoft, which recently celebrated its 50th anniversary, one step closer to being carbon negative, water positive and land positive by 2030.
Microsoft’s data centers are nearly waste-free
Borkar explained the company had exceeded its target by piloting the sustainable extraction of rare earth minerals and metals from HDDs at scale, reducing the need for new materials such as neodymium, gold and copper.
The extracting process involves the acid-free dissolution of shredded HDDs, said to deliver a 90% high-yield recovery rate.
The company also boasted of a 95% reduction in emissions compared with traditional mining and processing practices, highlighting the broader cross-category effects recycling can have to help Microsoft reach more than just one of its sustainability goals.
Microsoft has also continued to expand its Circular Centers globally with the goal of processing and routing decommissioned servers and hardware components onto their next useful lives – things ike academies that train data center technicians.
Its first Circular Center, located in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, opened in 2020. Five more across the US, Ireland and Singapore have followed since then, and the company has already drawn up plans for new sites in Cardiff, Wales; New South Wales, Australia and San Antonio, Texas.
The third change that has allowed Microsoft to reach that all-important 90.9% rate one year early was the introduction of recyclable packaging solutions for transporting data center hardware to enable easier curbside recycling.
Borkar claims more than 30,000 server racks have been processed through Microsoft’s global packaging recycling program, diverting more than 2,500 metric tons of waste from landfills.
That said, every step taken in the right direction is seemingly met with a step backwards. Microsoft’s 2024 Sustainability Report details how greenhouse gas emissions and electricity consumption have been climbing annually since at least 2020, indicative of the colossal impact of powerful cloud computing and artificial intelligence data centers.
