Client
Expertise
Assurance and labelling
Impact
Empowering consumers to choose devices with a reduced carbon footprint.
Challenge
How can companies promote products with reduced carbon emissions?
Whether we ask Alexa to call a friend or use our Fire TV to search for our next TV show, we’ve never been as connected as we are today. As part of their design development, technology companies have an opportunity to minimise energy-related CO2 emissions from their products.
Committed to reaching Net Zero carbon by 2040, Amazon co-founded The Climate Pledge and redesigned its devices, making sure sustainability is foundational to how they build and design each product and service.
In most cases, Amazon incorporates recycled post-consumer plastics, fabrics and metals into the latest generation of its connected devices. The company also rolled out 'Low Power Mode', a feature that reduces devices' lifetime energy consumption by using less power during periods of inactivity.
Through an independent verification, Amazon Devices wanted to be transparent and prove that the latest versions of its devices were designed with sustainability in mind. If successful, products would qualify as Climate Pledge Friendly.
Solution
Audit, review, and verify carbon footprint data for devices
A robust audit of Amazon products against their previous generations enabled us to:
Verify Amazon device footprint calculations—from manufacturing to use phase to end-of-life emissions—across each product range.
Validate the company's individual emission reduction plans for each device range in line with ISO 14067.
Verify over 50 devices as reducing their carbon footprints, communicated using the Carbon Trust label. These include Amazon’s Echo, Fire TV and Kindle devices.
Impact
Enabling consumers to choose more efficient devices
Amazon has taken concrete steps to cut its operational and device product footprints. Through our footprint label, Amazon Devices can:
Prove that emissions across each Amazon device were cut between device generations.
Instil customer confidence in Amazon’s devices which qualify for the Climate Pledge Friendly initiative.
Make it easier for customers to find Amazon’s more sustainable devices on Amazon.com.
Use carbon calculations to inspire more sustainable product designs.
Using the label to drive product innovation
Since the verification, Amazon has used the verified figures as a carbon baseline, integrating carbon emission reductions into its device product strategy. The new KPIs spur their product engineers to cut emissions through thoughtful design decisions. As such, footprint labelling not only benefits companies on a consumer level, it can also inspire innovation and a more sustainable product roadmap and feed into a company's climate goals.
We started the Climate Pledge Friendly program to help make it easier for customers to discover and shop for more-sustainable products. We look to bodies like the Carbon Trust that are rigorous and transparent. We’re thankful to have had their trusted expertise and are proud to have earned their verification.
In 2022 the Carbon Trust launched the connected devices secretariat alongside leading tech companies such as Amazon, Microsoft and Samsung. The secretariat seeks to standardise the way in which companies can account for and decarbonise the emissions associated with connected devices while being used by customers.
