Amazon says it’s using computing equipment for longer and diverting millions of components from landfills. | Amazon Web Services
Amazon’s sustainability efforts have resulted in millions of components being diverted from landfills and in longer useful lifespans for equipment, the company announced on its website earlier this month.
Amazon Web Services, which includes the company’s cloud and artificial intelligence offerings, reported that it has reused, resold or recycled more than 99% of its functional, sanitized and retired server racks through Amazon’s re:Cycle Reverse Logistics hubs, for example. More than 23 million components in all have been recycled or resold since last year, and 13% of AWS’s needed spare parts have come out of its own inventory.
Improved maintenance and equipment consolidation, meanwhile, pushed the average hard drive lifespan from five years to six, meaning almost 300,000 new hard drive purchases have been avoided so far. The company said it also plans to use more recycled or bio-based plastic content in its server rack components.
“We’re challenging the traditional ‘take-make-waste’ model, taking a holistic approach to extend the lifecycle of our resources,” said Manju Murugesan, AWS’s circular economy strategy lead, in a written statement.
“While we’re encouraged by our progress, we recognize the complexity of the challenge ahead. Our journey towards true circularity requires ongoing innovation and collaboration, and we’re committed to this critical work for the benefit of our business, customers and the planet.”
Amazon has reported making headway on multiple sustainability initiatives in recent months, including in reducing single-plastic usage and making other changes to its shipment packaging. The AWS updates also come as AI’s voracious appetite for both energy and computing equipment have raised concerns around the world, recently spurring the UK to require online retailers to contribute to the cost of recycling e-scrap.
In October AWS announced it was investing $500 million in developing more compact nuclear reactors, one of many nuclear-related initiatives being pursued by Amazon, Google, Microsoft and other tech companies.
“We want these data centers to be built in the United States for a variety of reasons, including national security reasons,” said U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm in October, according to CNBC. “We need additional power to be able to do that, and we want that power to be clean power.”