Creating space for environmental protection and conservation

George Pawlyszyn, General Manager, Middle East and Africa, Rackspace Technology, elaborates on how businesses today are unanimously seeking to improve the outlook, with sustainability being the primary mechanism.

We’re experiencing a huge watershed moment worldwide. Social, economic, health and environmental issues are disrupting business like never before. For the first time in history, businesses are unanimously seeking to improve the outlook, with sustainability being the primary mechanism to do so.  Years of determined global efforts to address rising carbon emissions culminated in COP26 at the end of last year, where Middle Eastern countries joined the rest of the world in pledging to decarbonize the globe.

Rackspace Technology takes green issues very seriously. Guiding our environmental strategy is a fairly straightforward ethos: give more than we take from our planet. To do that, we support innovative technologies that change the energy industry for the better through the use of renewable energy, supporting global conservation efforts and advocacy.

Achieving that goal puts us five years ahead of the U.N. Paris Agreement on Climate Change ambition to limit the planet’s global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, compared to pre-industrial levels of net zero by 2050.

To solidify our commitment to conserving the environment while building sustainable business operations, we recently released our first Environmental, Social, and Governance Report detailing some of the ways we’re striving to make this planet a better place.

Minimizing our Waste

We’ve found creative ways to minimize waste on our campuses, such as composting coffee grounds and shipping pallets, refurbishing retired IT equipment for aftermarket use, and collecting HVAC condensation to maintain landscaping and operate cooling towers.

We’ve also implemented water reduction and waste recycling initiatives, including working with technology equipment suppliers to ship specific equipment or components in reusable crates rather than standard throwaway cardboard packaging.

Measuring Our Emissions

Rackspace Technology has prepared a greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions inventory (scope 1, 2, and partial 3) every year since 2008 for all our operations worldwide. Our participation in the annual CDP survey provides customers and investors with a transparent and streamlined view of both our emissions data and our environmental sustainability standards.

A better understanding of our footprint allows us to identify high-impact efficiency projects that help us conserve resources and benchmark outcomes. For example, we use specialized air filters in our London office to reduce carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) by 2,000 kilograms per year.

Partnering for Sustainability

In the spirit of doing our part to preserve the environment, our suppliers are encouraged to incorporate environmental responsibility into their operational decision-making processes, perform above the minimum standard of the law, and continually revisit their sustainability performance to ensure efforts are being made to improve results.

We expect our suppliers to take a holistic view and consider social, environmental, and governance aspects in decisions regarding responsible sourcing, managing wastewater, pollution prevention, and handling hazardous materials.

Solving Together

Through the delivery of cloud services to our customers, Rackspace Technology is contributing to an overall reduction of energy consumption. In addition, by moving companies to shared resources and facilities, cloud adoption helps to reduce the number of duplicates, energy-hungry data centers across an enterprise.

Customers who decide to move their data to the cloud with Rackspace Technology have various options to help them further reduce their carbon footprint. The sustainability and financial benefits from cloud migration vary, depending on which cloud a customer selects, the level of cloud optimization, and whether the customer uses any sustainability innovations powered by the cloud.