Google announced last week that as part of its ‘going green’ and sustainability drive the company is now using recycled material in all of its ‘Made by Google’ products.
The search giant added that the milestone was achieved way ahead of schedule, as the company had announced in 2019 that it expected to include recycled material in all of its products by 2022. All ‘Made by Google’ products, including Pixel phones, Pixelbooks, Google Home speakers, Nest devices, and accessories like phone cases and charging stands, now incorporate recycled material.
Elaborating on the initiative, Google said that the back cover of its latest flagship smartphone, the Pixel 5 is made with 100 percent recycled aluminum, and the new Nest Audio has 70 percent recycled plastic, alongwith the sustainable fabric cover it introduced with the Nest Mini last year. And on the newest Nest Thermostat, the trim plate (the part that attaches to the wall) is made from post-consumer recycled plastic.
The company said its focus on incorporating recycled materials in its hardware design “not only supports our sustainability commitments, but also enables our supply chain partners to confidently invest in and develop these types of materials so that the wider consumer electronics industry can use them too.”
Google said in September it would run its operations carbon-free by 2030 and that it had purchased enough carbon offsets to cancel out the company’s carbon dioxide emissions since its founding in 1998, and that since 2007 the company has been carbon neutral — the emissions it generates burning fossil fuels are offset by its investments in renewable energy and other initiatives.
In its announcement this week, Google added that it would continue to keep “all shipping of Made by Google hardware to and from direct customers 100 percent carbon neutral. In addition, the company said it remained committed to using recycled or renewable material in at least 50 percent of all plastic used across all of its hardware products by 2025.
The company also said that by 2025, it would make its entire product packaging 100 percent plastic free and 100 percent recyclable, while working to achieve zero waste-to-landfill certification at all of its final assembly manufacturing sites by 2022, by ensuring that the majority of waste from those operations would be recycled.