MICROSOFT CORPORATION
SUSTAINABILITY
Three pillars of success Microsoft’ s circular economy strategy rests on three key initiatives that have enabled this breakthrough achievement.
The first involves piloting sustainable extraction of rare earth minerals from hard disk drives at scale. In collaboration with Western Digital, Critical Materials Recycling and PedalPoint Recycling, Microsoft has processed approximately 50,000lbs of end-oflife hard drives, recovering critical materials including neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium, gold and copper. This process reduces emissions by 95 % compared with traditional mining methods whilst maintaining domestic processing to minimise transportation emissions.
The second pillar centres on the Circular Centers themselves, which sort, test and channel servers and components for internal reuse, resale or donation to skills training academies. In 2024 alone, Microsoft reused more than 3.2 million components through internal and external channels, representing a 30 % increase in value recovery through the programme.
The third initiative focuses on co-creating recyclable packaging solutions for transporting data centre hardware. More than 30,000 server racks have been processed through Microsoft’ s global packaging recycling programme, diverting over 2,500 metric tonnes of waste from landfills.
MICROSOFT CORPORATION
HEADQUARTERS: US
NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES: ~ 228,000
MARKET CAP: US $ 3.66TN
118 February 2026