In the last few years, we’ve been home more, meaning we’ve been streaming more as well as gaming more. With digital consumption on the sharp uptick, many companies in tech and gaming are looking at reducing their carbon footprints and becoming more responsible social citizens. Giants like Apple are shooting for carbon neutral by 2030, and Microsoft is even eyeing being carbon negative by the same year, having started a bit ahead of the curve. Verizon announced that 2035 is their year at this past January’s all-digital CES.
Razer just joined the club, announcing plans earlier today to transition to 100% renewable energy across all of their global offices by 2025 – a huge step towards becoming a carbon neutral company by 2030. This 10-year environmental roadmap flies under the #GoGreenWithRazer flag, outlining not only internal business practices but multi-faceted changes to manufacturing and new programs to that end.
Razer is focusing on creating a corporate culture of care for the planet, removing single-use plastics from all of their global sites and reducing greenhouse emissions while also investing in forestry and other environmental-impact projects. Razer’s Hamburg, Germany office is already powered by renewables, and their soon-to-be complete Singapore site will follow the same green playbook.
On the product end, Razer will be rolling out a program allowing all Razer products to be recyclable with the brand for users and distributors by 2025, encouraging users to return products through the Razer Store for free recycling. Further they pledge to use recycled or recyclable materials for all of their product manufacturing by 2030. This includes PCR plastics and FSC-certified biodegradable packaging.
To bring the Razer community along for their green initiatives, they teamed up with Conservation International for their Sneki Snek merchandise campaign, which saves 10 trees with the proceeds of every $29.99 biodegradable (and adorable) plushie available here. For every 250,000 trees saved, Razer will release more merch to sell. Right now, in addition to the plushie is a Sneki Snek head pillow for your computer chair to help forests in Costa Rica, Ecuador, Suriname, Brazil, Madagascar, and Indonesia among many other locations. Their goal is 1 million trees and at the time of this writing they’ve already crossed 170,000.
Financially, Razer pledges to invest in environmental and sustainability startups through zVentures, their corporate venture arm, aiming to encourage sustainability in the youth community as well as with Millenials and Gen Z.
It’s good to seeing the gaming industry working with focused intent towards a more responsible environmental future. Even Sony pointed out on their own blog one year after joining the United Nations’ Playing for the Planet initiative that streaming can have a larger environmental footprint than downloading games or purchasing them on disc. As one of the most recognizable brands in the gaming space as well as with streamers globally, Razer’s new official environmental stance is a welcome announcement, especially in conjunction with the Project Hazel mask reveal at CES in response to our new COVID normal.
You can see more about Razer’s green initiatives on their Go Green With Razer website.
