Microsoft plans to address dwindling water resources in its latest environmental pledge. Microsoft made a new commitment to replenish even more water than it uses for its global operations by 2030, making the company “water positive.”
To replenish water sources, the plan includes actions like investing in wetland restoration and removing impervious surfaces like asphalt. Microsoft will focus on highly stressed water basins near its operations.
Reducing water consumption is also a focus. At the company’s new Silicon Valley campus, 100 percent of the site’s non-potable water will come from onsite recycling sources like rainwater collection and waste treatment. That could save as much as 4.3 million gallons of potable water each year. At other campuses, Microsoft will use recycled water for landscaping, plumbing and tower cooling.
Microsoft hasn’t yet laid out plans for other places where it’s operating. But the company says it’s considering a broad range of fixes, from restoring wetlands to injecting water back into diminishing aquifers. Restoring a wetland can slow or stop water flow enough to allow the aquifer beneath it to recharge. Microsoft can also follow the lead of places like Orange County, California that have figured out how to replenish aquifers by cleaning up the water it uses and pumping it back into the ground.
Microsoft says it’s taking steps to become more efficient, but it is still using more water each year. It withdrew nearly 8 million cubic meters of water from municipal systems and other local sources in 2019, compared to a little over 7 million in 2018. Addressing its water usage will be a challenge, but it might be easier than some of the other commitments that the company has made recently. When Microsoft promised earlier this year to draw down all of its historic greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, the technology to do that didn’t exist at scale. It still doesn’t.
But unlike the new existential threat to humanity posed by industry-fueled climate change, the ebb and flow of water has driven both prosperity and disaster for ages. All that experience has left our species with established ways of managing, replenishing, and conserving this valuable resource. All it takes is putting those practices into action.
“We’ve never managed carbon before. But as a society, we’ve managed water for a long time,” Joppa says.
