Akamai Partners with Supplier To Meet Sustainability Goals

by Mike Mattera on September 19, 2019

Akamai strives to mitigate the impact of our operations while maximizing and enhancing the benefits of our sustainable business practices. We are working hard to hit our sustainability goals by: creating a more sustainable platform through reducing network energy intensity by way of engineering efficiency, lowering our greenhouse gas emissions below 2015 levels by sourcing renewable energy and doing our part to ensure 100% of our electronic waste is recycled responsibly. At Akamai, as a complement to our ongoing investment to enhance our global intelligent platform, we are constantly innovating and engineering ways to mitigate the environmental impact of our business operations. Quite simply, we seek to make the internet fast, intelligent and secure in a sustainable way.

Most recently, Akamai’s sustainability and procurement teams challenged one of our hardware providers – Jabil Inc. We asked them to join us in lessening our upstream environmental impact, and the results were outstanding!

Jabil rose to the challenge, presenting us with new and exciting ideas to drive waste reduction and energy consumption:

Jabil vowed to change its cardboard packaging to 100% recycled material, which will result in the use of approximately 39,000 pounds of recycled content per year. All at no additional cost to Akamai.
Jabil will change all foam layers to 100% recycled material, promoting the use of approximately 31,000 pounds of recycled content per year. Again, at no additional cost to Akamai.
Jabil has redesigned our shipping configurations to a single-pack, slimmer design that fits 10 boxes, up from the previous five boxes. With this change, Akamai will reduce 40% of the wooden and plastic pallets used, actually saving us money on server shipping.

“Jabil is committed to managing its environmental impacts to positively contribute to addressing the effects of Climate Change. We do that through increased operational efficiency, a renewable energy strategy and innovating new ways to integrate sustainability into the way we work. Partnerships like the one with Akamai are powerful because they bring the resources of two purpose-driven organizations together to realize great products while supporting global environmental goals. and we all reap the rewards.” – Eric Austermann, Jabil’s Vice President, Sustainability.

In addition to these enhancemets to their partnership with Akamai, Jabil is also looking to add solar panels to its own facilities in Jalisco, Mexico as well as reducing its consumption of fossil fuels through A/C usage and lunch room production.

We made a request of our vendor, and Jabil came back with measurable ways to help us meet our sustainability goals. Without their willingness, these sustainable changes would not have occurred. Even better, Jabil decided to bring these benefits to other customers as well, thus creating a virtuous circle.

It is great to see suppliers like Jabil are as committed as Akamai in reducing their impact on the planet. Innovative packaging and green energy alternatives to power operations are ways in which our suppliers can take action. Akamai appreciates being presented with sustainable choices that reduce greenhouse gas emissions while ensuring our hardware is safe, secure and deployment-ready when shipped to the field. There needn’t be trade offs when it comes to making sustainable choices. We applaud Jabil for taking a lead in presenting sustainable options to their customers.

Learn more about Akamai’s Sustainability initiatives at Akamai Sustainability.