Expanding Microsoft’s Compliance Platform for Sustainability
Objective
Enhance Microsoft’s compliance platform for sustainability, tracking packaging data globally.
Services
Developed a custom tool for material content, sustainability data collection, and compliance reporting.
Impact
Efficiently collects, validates, and reports on sustainability and compliance data for Microsoft’s zero-waste commitment.
Objectives
In 2020 Microsoft committed to ‘zero waste’ by 2030 and also set Cloud Responsible Packaging Goals, to ensure its cloud hardware packaging meets global regulatory compliance requirements and creates minimal environmental impact. Additionally, as the compliance landscape changes rapidly with emerging worldwide packaging regulations such as Substances of Concern in Products (SCIP), Microsoft wanted to integrate new functionality into its compliance platform to better track and measure sustainability.
Project
Anthesis worked with Microsoft’s internal teams including Cloud Hardware Infrastructure Engineering and Cloud Supply Chain Sustainability and external stakeholders such as Contract Manufacturers and European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) to build a solution with the following capability:
Capturing material content and sustainability data for packaging from suppliers
Validating the collected packaging data against a packaging specification
Reporting on sustainability data to demonstrate corporate sustainability goal are met
Reporting on material content to ensure regulatory compliance requirements are met
Services
Our process included:
Supplier training webinars and helpdesk
Data validation protocol
Email workflow
Technology involved:
Excel Packaging Template compliant with IPC-1752A
The Compliance Map
Power BI
Impacts
Capability to collect packaging data from global supply chain using single request and template
Ability to validate packaging data
Ability to obtain packaging data for carbon and waste calculations
Ability to facilitate supplier emission reduction planning
Ability to submit SCIP dossiers to ECHA
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) analysis
Anthesis developed a custom tool that enables us to efficiently collect material content and sustainability data from our supply chain and integrate it with our product bill of materials. We now can systematically digest and report on regulatory compliance and sustainability data.
Sarah Scott Compliance Engineer, Microsoft
We were pleased to work with the Anthesis team on this project and are very happy with the support they provided. The team’s expertise in SBTs in Private Equity, combined with their attentiveness to our needs, made us comfortable to commit to the SBTi. They also made the submission process to the SBTi very smooth by helping out with the application to fulfil all requirements.
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