As part of its long-term sustainability goals, Microsoft has announced plans to drastically reduce the amount of waste it produces and eliminate single-use plastics in its packaging by 2025.
"The plastics problem is just part of a broader waste problem," Lucas Joppa, chief environmental officer for Microsoft, told Cheddar. "The world creates too much waste. Microsoft creates too much waste, and we need to fix that."
This is the third major announcement in 2020 from the tech giant detailing its sustainability plan. In January, Microsoft announced its goal to become carbon negative by 2030. Then in July, it released the details of that plan, which includes switching its data centers to renewable energy, issuing a request for proposals for carbon removal solutions, and developing a de-carbonization playbook that it plans to share with other firms to help catalyze the corporate sector.
While waste reduction is just one component of Microsoft's efforts to fight climate change, Joppa stressed that it's an important one.
"Last year, 11 billion tons of waste was sent to the landfill," he said. "We went from, in 1950, producing one and a half million tons of plastics to last year producing 300 million tons of plastic as a society, and over half of that was intended for single-use."
For Microsoft consumers, this initiative means more of their tech purchases will be recyclable, from the packaging that products arrive in, to the devices themselves once they've outlived their use.
"We want the packaging itself to have zero single-use plastic," Joppa said. "We also want the device that's hopefully coming in that package to be recyclable as well."
Microsoft is also building what it calls "Circular Centers" to control the flow of waste out of its 160 data centers across the globe. These centers will sort and decommission parts used for servers, which currently last on average about five years, and then recycle or repurpose them.
In the process, the company hopes to learn more about its products and work to extend their life cycle and reduce e-waste.
Microsoft has already tested this concept in Amsterdam and shown that it increases the availability of server and network parts for reuse or buy-back from suppliers. The goal is to increase the reuse of components by up to 90 percent by 2025.
"What we're really looking to do is do everything we possibly can to divert waste from landfills," Joppa said.
Skype users are scrambling to find an alternative after Microsoft shut down the pioneering internet phone service which let people make cheap long distance calls and chat with other users. Google Voice lets users make calls from a smartphone or a desktop web browser but it's only available to people in the U.S. Viber users can call phone numbers but can't get a number to receive calls. Zoom offers phone options too. You could get a number from a low cost virtual carrier or try other internet phone services. Microsoft says some Skype features will migrate to Teams, but its Teams Phone feature is only for businesses.
Amid a backdrop of ongoing tariff uncertainty, more and more gamers are facing price hikes. Microsoft raised recommended retailer pricing for its Xbox consoles and controllers around the world this week. Its Xbox Series S, for example, now starts at $379.99 in the U.S. — up $80 from the $299.99 price tag that debuted in 2020. And its more powerful Xbox Series X will be $599.99 going forward, a $100 jump from its previous $499.99 listing. The tech giant didn’t mention tariffs specifically, but cited wider “market conditions and the rising cost of development.” Beyond the U.S., Microsoft also laid out Xbox price adjustments for Europe, the U.K. and Australia. The company said all other countries would also receive updates locally.
Apple CEO Tim Cook said Thursday that the majority of iPhones sold in the U.S. in the current fiscal quarter will be sourced from India, while iPads and other devices will come from Vietnam as the company works to avoid the impact of President Trump’s tariffs on its business. Apple’s earnings for the first three months of the year topped Wall Street’s expectations thanks to high demand for its iPhones, and the company said tariffs had a limited effect on the fiscal second quarter’s results. Cook added that for the current quarter, assuming things don’t change, Apple expects to see $900 million added to its costs as a result of the tariffs.
Visa is hoping to hand your credit card to an artificial intelligence “agent” that can find and buy clothes, groceries, airplane tickets and other items on your behalf.
Shares of Deliveroo, the food delivery service based in London, are hitting three-year highs on Monday after it received a $3.6 billion proposed takeover offer from DoorDash.
