By Cally Chan, General Manager, Microsoft Hong Kong and Macau
Christmas is the season of giving and sharing joyous moments, with presents stack high and many feasts. During the festive celebrations, consumers in the UK will use 227,000 miles of wrapping paper each year – the amount of wrapping paper thrown away could reach to the moon. Around the world, households discard 74kg of food a person, according to data from the UN, and food waste and loss causes about 10% of the emissions driving the climate emergency.
In Hong Kong, according to a study by an environmental group Green Sense, over 780 million pieces of packaging waste was generated in Hong Kong over the past year. On average, 2.32 pieces of materials were used to wrap a single product, six percent higher than last year. With ESG and sustainability becoming a key focus in the business world, it is also crucial for everyone to have a more conscious festive season and throughout our everyday life.
Microsoft has always been committed to a more sustainable future. As we support our customers and Hong Kong in this cloud-first economy, since 2012, we have been 100% carbon neutral. Customers already benefit from the cloud’s ability to provide massive efficiency that reduces the collective carbon footprint required to support the world’s compute needs. Microsoft’s commitment is to be carbon negative by 2030 and by 2050 remove from the environment all the carbon the company has emitted, either directly or by electrical consumption since it was founded in 1975.
Looking beyond at our cloud offering, sustainability and circularity, from design to manufacturing to recovery, are embedded in Surface devices. They are ENERGY STAR certified, increasingly repairable, easy to update, multifunctional (reducing the need for multiple devices), and can be recycled at the end of their life.
The newest generation of Surface product packaging uses FSC-certified paper and fiber and contains less than 1% of plastic by weight. And our new packaging is 99% recyclable on average. With our goal to be carbon negative by 2030, we are also aiming to achieve 100% recyclable devices and packaging by the same year.
With this in mind, the Microsoft Ocean Plastic Mouse was launched earlier this year and was available in Hong Kong this November. Priced at HKD 179, it is available at Fortress. The shell of this eco-friendly mouse is made with 20% recycled ocean plastic, a breakthrough in materials technology that begins with the removal of plastic waste from oceans and waterways. The recycled ocean plastic made from ocean-bound plastic waste collected from approximately 30 miles from a waterway or coastal area, then processed into recyclable plastic resin pellets and are blended in during the materials development process that makes the shell of the Ocean Plastic Mouse.
The Ocean Plastic Mouse is a small step forward in Microsoft’s sustainability journey. If we all take a small step, big change can be achieved together. On behalf of Microsoft Hong Kong, we wish you a Merry Green Christmas and an eco-friendly New Year ahead!
