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Facebook aims to be water positive by 2030

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Facebook aims to be water positive by 2030

Efforts to source water responsibly, drive water efficiency across operations and invest in water restoration project are going global

Social media giant Facebook has pledged to be water positive by 2030, meaning that the company will return more water to the environment than it consumes for its global operations.

Sylvia Lee, Facebook's sustainability water lead, said in a blog post that becoming water positive by the end of the decade is a long-term goal, and they are confident of achieving the goal, based on the enormous advances made over the last decade.

"We believe commitments like these can make a meaningful contribution to the global race to build a more sustainable future," she added.

Facebook follows a water stewardship strategy that focuses on sourcing water responsibly, driving water efficiency across all operations, as well as investing in water restoration projects in the watersheds where its facilities are located.

The company has invested in projects that help replenish more than 850 million gallons of water a year across six American states, including California, New Mexico and Utah. In 2020, these projects restored about 595 million gallons of water in regions that experience high levels of water stress.

These efforts range from modernising agricultural irrigation infrastructure to providing drinking water to Navajo Nation families and supplying fresh water to river systems during dry seasons to sustain aquatic habitats.

Facebook plans to extend the work to cover Singapore, Ireland, Mexico, India and the UK in the future. It is also investing in onsite recycled water systems that enable cooling and humidifying its datacentres.

Combined, the changes have enabled Facebook datacentres to operate with an average 80 per cent higher water efficiency than the industry standard.

The latest commitment from Facebook comes months after it announced that it had successfully reached net zero emissions in April, paving the way for it to achieve a further goal of net zero emissions across its entire supply chain by 2030.

'We set these goals in 2018 and today we are one of the largest corporate buyers of renewable energy,' Facebook said.

'We have contracts in place for more than six gigawatts of wind and solar energy across 18 states and five countries. All 63 projects are new and located on the same electrical grids as the data centres they support.'

Ambitious climate targets have recently become a point of positive competition among big tech firms.

In July last year, Apple pledged to become carbon neutral throughout its entire business, manufacturing supply chain and product life cycle by 2030. The company said that it was already carbon neutral across its global corporate operations, but the new pledge means that every Apple product sold worldwide would need to have zero carbon impact by 2030.

Amazon has also promised to be 100 per cent powered by renewable energy by 2025 and carbon neutral by 2040.

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai also announced in April that five of the company's data centre sites now operate at or near 90 per cent carbon-free energy.

Computing will run the Tech Impact Conference this year, exploring the relationship between tech and the climate - including case studies about the road to net zero, how to go green in your data centre and supply chain, and how to make small changes with a big impact. For those who are passionate about the planet - and those who are more wary - there has never been a better time to get involved.

Facebook aims to be water positive by 2030

Efforts to source water responsibly, drive water efficiency across operations and invest in water restoration project are going global

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