Immersing Employees in Culture with Sustainable Solutions

Across the approximately 40 million square feet of real estate within our global portfolio, we’ve placed emphasis on resource management and reduction while driving innovation in the areas of carbon, water, ecosystems, and waste. This effort supports our company goal to be carbon negative, water positive, zero waste, and protect more land than we operate on by 2030 and ensures employees, whether making their way into work or participating in a hybrid environment, can take an active part in our commitment to address climate change.

Our real estate team is committed to building and operating connected, sustainable facilities in support of a greener future. We do this through intentional decision-making at every stage of the building and operations process. During Earth Month this year, I wanted to share how we’ve progressed to think about sustainability at some of the most critical stages in our building and modernization efforts:

Plan for Sustainability

Realizing our 2030 sustainability goals requires a data-driven approach. With this in mind, we ensure that every project includes measurable outcomes to define progress and success. When we implement changes at a single site, we’re trying to improve operations at that particular location and also apply those learnings to other workplaces around the world.

Looking back on this past year, we developed and launched new sustainability criteria for our leased workplaces around the globe. With these specific criteria, we’re able to infuse sustainable thinking into our leasing workstream and ensure that when we select a new location, it is being held to ambitious and quantifiable sustainability standards. These criteria apply across the portfolio and demonstrate our commitment to considering each buildings’ sustainability impact as early in its Microsoft lifecycle as possible.

Our sustainability ambitions also live in the technology we’re piloting and deploying worldwide to reduce our water, waste, and carbon usage. In Dubai, we’re launching an atmospheric drinking water device to pull humidity from the air and convert it into potable water for our office. In Hyderabad (image below), a similar air-to-water plant became operational at our Microsoft site last year and generates an average of 396 kiloliters of potable drinking water, accounting for nearly 20% of the entire campuses’ water needs. By charting regionally relevant solutions, we create road maps for how other Microsoft campuses — and the industry at large — can benefit from new innovations.?

Operationalize Sustainable Solutions

As a society, we spend nearly 90% of our time indoors. The ways we outfit those interior spaces matter, for the environment and our employee culture alike. This year, we conducted an embodied carbon study to identify the top ten most carbon-intensive materials found in Microsoft facilities around the world. With this information, we can strategize on embodied carbon reduction in the materials that employees interact with day in and day out.

Making our work environments more sustainable also requires a particular focus on enhancing employee experiences. ?One example is our first all-electric dining facility in Redmond and our ongoing effort to implement all-electric dining on all campuses globally. Transitioning to full electricity meant a redesign of the kitchen infrastructure, completely new menus, and making sure chefs are trained in new, electric-cooking methods.

Investing in the ecosystems and communities beyond Microsoft’s workplaces is a vital component of our sustainability strategy, as well. This approach is central to how we define and support our culture through enduring connections with the broader community. Around the globe, our real estate teams frequently partner with community organizations to help them achieve their own sustainability goals while supporting local economies and ecosystems. As an example, our team is collaborating with local beekeeper organizations to install and maintain beehives at several of our global offices. The latest additions are coming this spring to our Atlantic Yards (image below), Ga., and New York City campuses. Given that honeybees are responsible for pollinating 70 of the world's top 100 food crops, these hives will positively impact nearly 18,000 acres of surrounding land. ?

Measure the Impact

Collecting, measuring, and publishing project data is vital to ensuring tangible change. For us, the win is in sharing our learnings so that all of us can work towards building a more sustainable future. This collaborative mindset we bring to our data collection and dissemination is key: protecting the future of our planet is, and will always be a collective endeavor.

Last year, we began efforts to bring the groundbreaking EC3 tool to China. In order to integrate this tool into the construction process, we first had to support the establishment of product category rules to create Environmental Production Declarations, or EPDs, for the region to communicate the environmental performance and impact of any material in its lifetime. We’re currently working to roll out the tool and incentivize building material suppliers to make embodied carbon information available, therefore supporting the global building sector’s efforts to use this data to select building materials with lower embodied carbon during construction.

?A Stronger Planet for All

From the way we build to the way we operate our campuses, we support Microsoft’s sustainability goals.?We seek every opportunity to improve the way we work, live, and preserve the resources all of us depend on.

Whether it’s in our 40 million square feet of real estate or elsewhere, when we turn our collective ambition toward a more sustainable life, we can realize a stronger planet for us all. I look forward to sharing more updates on our progress along with the work we do year-round.?