Our approach to consumer hardware carbon footprint reduction

By Julie Rapoport
Head of Net Zero Strategy and Environmental Footprinting, Google Consumer Hardware

At Google, we have an ambitious goal to reach net-zero emissions across all of our operations and value chain by 2030. Our consumer hardware group has been working to reduce the carbon footprint of our devices for several years and, in keeping with the company’s aim to build a more sustainable future beyond Google, we’re excited to share our approach in this guide.

We recognize that corporations are at different stages of their carbon journey. We hope this guide will be helpful to anyone who wants to build on their existing carbon accounting and reporting function to identify and pursue specific, actionable carbon reduction opportunities.

We began with a few key questions: “What is the carbon footprint of our consumer hardware?” and “What can we do about it?” Then we also asked, “How can we address these questions pragmatically?” and, more specifically, “What changes can we make to actively reduce the carbon footprint of our products?”

Our efforts started back in 2018 with an in-depth, data-driven assessment of Pixel 3. We looked for the biggest opportunities to reduce the carbon footprint of our phones. We found that a single component, the enclosure, contributed greatly to the device’s overall carbon footprint.

To address this, we switched the aluminum in the enclosure to 100% recycled aluminum, reducing the carbon footprint of the aluminum portion of the enclosure by over 35% compared to 100% primary aluminum. We first used recycled aluminum in the enclosure of Pixel 5 and the aluminum in the enclosure of all Pixel phones since Pixel 6 has been made with 100% recycled content.¹

This process became the foundation of our overall approach: find the carbon hotspots and work with teams to reduce them. We’ve learned that we can prioritize our work on a few key high-impact parts, rather than every single component of our complex devices.

In the years since, we have refined and scaled our process to actively find and consider lower carbon operational, design, and procurement options. We’ve found this hotspot approach can then be aggregated across all our devices to provide carbon-aware strategies that apply to our entire consumer hardware portfolio, rather than only individual devices. Throughout the process, we interact with design and operations teams, including our partners in industrial, product, electrical, and hardware design, along with software and manufacturing engineering, product management, procurement, and finance. We also engage directly with our supply chain, as much of the carbon footprint of our devices comes from the supply chain.

We’re always trying to improve our processes and we’ll update them as we discover new and better practices. We welcome feedback on this particular approach and how it might scale within and across industries. Please let us know what you think.

g.co/hardware/DeviceCarbonReduction
consumer_hardware_net_zero@google.com