Google Promises To Maximize Recycled Material In Its Hardware Products

The Mountain View-headquartered tech company Google has focused on producing consumer hardware for its “Made by Google” products including Home Minis and Pixel smartphones for recent three years. Before that, it also explored other hardware in several years.

The company is reportedly ready to bring more sustainable products to its consumers. From 2022 to then, it will leverage recycled materials for all of the Made by Google products, as well as to fully exploit recycled content if feasible. Google also hopes that until 2020, all of its shipments will become carbon neutral.

This move has shown the sustainability efforts of the tech giant in the protection of the environment. During two years, from 2017 to 2018, Google reduced the carbon emissions caused by the company’s product shipment by 40%.

In the next four years (in 2023), it plans to offer 1 million Nest thermostats, which are designed to save energy, to households in need via the project called Power Project. As of now, Google has used post-consumer recycled plastic for lots of Nest products.

However, it has never been easy to completely transform into recycled content. According to reports from the US business magazine Fast Company, while developing a new product that may be available at the end of 2019, the hardware team of Google decided to use fabric from recycled bottles, instead of polyester fabric according to the industry standards.

The reports also pointed out that they spent two years ensuring the new material could meet vital requirements in the manufacture and design processes. In addition, they needed to make sure that suppliers could provide the material at scale. The latest source reveals that each unit in Google’s new product will be made with 1/3 of recycled plastic bottles.