Microsoft has announced it has achieved a 90.9% reuse and recycling rate for servers and components in 2024, surpassing its target a year ahead of its 2025 zero-waste milestone. The achievement forms part of the company’s broader sustainability strategy, which includes ambitions to become carbon negative, water positive, and to protect more land than it uses by 2030.
Key to this progress is Microsoft’s push to embed circular economy practices across its global cloud operations. Central to this is the expansion of its Circular Centers—facilities that manage the reuse and recycling of datacentre hardware. Since launching the first centre in Amsterdam in 2020, Microsoft has added five more across the US, Ireland, and Singapore, with new sites planned in Wales, Australia, and Texas.
In 2024 alone, the company reused more than 3.2 million components, reflecting a 30% increase in value recovery. Circular Centres enable retired equipment to be repurposed internally, redistributed into other supply chains, or provided to technical training institutions.
Microsoft has also collaborated with Western Digital, Critical Materials Recycling, and PedalPoint Recycling to extract valuable materials from approximately 50,000 pounds of end-of-life hard disk drives (HDDs). This project yielded a 90% recovery rate of critical raw materials—including rare earth elements and precious metals—using an acid-free recycling process. According to life cycle assessments, the process resulted in a 95% reduction in emissions compared to conventional mining.
Efforts to reduce waste extend to datacentre packaging. In partnership with over 150 original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), Microsoft has been developing more sustainable alternatives to traditional multilayer packaging, which typically combines wood, glue, and foam. Through its global packaging recycling programme, the company has diverted more than 2,500 metric tonnes of waste from landfills, including materials from over 30,000 server racks.
The company is also trialling reusable packaging solutions to reduce waste further while maintaining the safety of server components during transit.
Microsoft’s circularity efforts are part of a wider industry movement to improve supply chain sustainability and reduce reliance on virgin materials. The firm continues to explore innovations to phase out hard-to-recycle plastics and scale up sustainable material alternatives such as paper and pulp.
