Google believes in the democratizing effect of putting knowledge in the hands of everyone, and is organizing the world's information and making it universally accessible. The company is committed to doing that in a way that has a positive impact on the planet.
A circular economy is restorative and regenerative by design, and aims to keep products, components and materials at their highest utility and value at all times. Key elements of the circular economy model optimise resources by circulating products, components and materials in use through different loops of the use cycle:
- Maintain / Prolong
- Reuse/ Redistribute
- Refurbish/ Remanufacture
- Recycle
Google’s global partnership with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation is supporting Google to build on existing practices and embed circular economic principles into the fabric of Google’s infrastructure, operations and culture.
There is no better example of how Google is implementing circular economy strategy at scale than how the company manages the hardware inside its data centers. This case study reviews the practices that have been implemented through maintenance, refurbishment/remanufacturing, redistribution/secondary market sales and recycling. These practices combined with Google’s circular approach to optimizing end of life of servers based on Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) principles have resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars per year in cost avoidance.