Catalyze October

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CATALYZE MAGAZINE | 9 3 Key Components That Will Make Your Organization More Sustainable EVANGELINE MARZEC: CTO, SUSTAINABILITY AT MICROSOFT Evangeline Marzec: In your own organization today, there are likely opportunities to proactively make changes in these areas to hit your sustainability targets. These things are under your direct control. First, by their very nature, buildings are a big contributor to our environmental footprint, and it's the first place that many organizations turn to in order to understand and reduce impact through optimization and efficiency solutions. In North America, residential and commercial buildings consume an estimated 40% of total US energy generation. The World Green Business Council estimates that every building on the planet must be net zero carbon by 2050 in order to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees C . Yet less than 1% of the global building stock meets the standard at Microsoft. Our data centers in total generate 210 grams of carbon dioxide equivalent per user equivalent to driving about a kilometer. But to reach net zero, we're working with our partners like Johnson Controls, to design embodied carbon out of our buildings and manage their energy efficiency in new ways. Second, examine the footprint of your products. It's probably bigger than you think. The take, make waste approach to consuming, using and disposing of materials and products simply isn't sustainable. We need to shift to a circular economy, which promotes the elimination of waste and the continued safe use of natural resources. For example, one of our teams investigated one of the best selling technology products of all time the Microsoft Mouse, and was able to redesign it to use 20% reclaimed ocean plastic.
3 KEY COMPONENTS THAT WILL MAKE YOUR ORGANIZATION MORE SUSTAINABLE E V A N G E L I N E M A R Z E C More organizations are embracing transparency on the footprint of their products today, while others are introducing new products designed to be circular or low carbon. Admittedly, today, it's still hard to get credit for these changes, give the current standards, and it's still harder to calculate the product level emissions across complex value chains. Third, look at the activities of your people and how they're contributing to your carbon footprint. New video conferencing and collaborative work solutions have begun to lower the footprint from travel and new approaches, including low carbon fuels, exist such as the sustainable jet fuel used in partnership between Microsoft and Alaska Airlines. We know this data is still hard to obtain, even internal , if we know this data is still hard to obtain even internally, and it's hard to measure the impact of adoption. We often take a sampling approach, for example, by hosting one Microsoft event for more than 2000 attendees, virtually as compared to in person. We've estimated that we lowered the carbon emissions associated with that event by nearly 5,000 metric tons. That's equivalent to the amount of carbon absorbed over 10 years by planting nearly 150 acres of forest. The road ahead contains enormous complexities and challenges. We can best walk it together with practicality, ingenuity, and a growth mindset open to learning, and sharing. Thank you for joining me on this journey. CATALYZE MAGAZINE | 10
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Catalyze October

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