Environmental sustainability practices

Our sustainability program has two overarching goals: 1. ensure that we operate with excellent sustainability practices and 2. support green companies, green talent and green skill-building.  As the world transitions to cleaner sources of power, new jobs are available and new skills are in demand. We provide insights into job and skill trends, and we offer a growing number of professional development courses about sustainability in our LinkedIn Learning library. We seek to empower and prepare our members for this career transition which will benefit the planet. 

Green jobs resource page

 

In January 2020, we joined our parent company, Microsoft, in committing to remove LinkedIn’s carbon footprint.  By 2030, LinkedIn will be Carbon Negative and by 2050 we will remove all historic carbon emissions.  First, we will drive down our Scope 1 and 2 emissions to near zero by 2025.   To achieve this, we are committed to powering all of our operations efficiently with electricity from renewable sources.  Further, by 2030, we will reduce our Scope 3 emissions by more than half and will remove more carbon than we emit.  By 2050, LinkedIn will remove all carbon the company has emitted either directly or by electrical consumption since our founding in 2002.   

We track the carbon emissions from our global operations, including offices, data centers, employee air travel, and commuting, and report with our parent company, Microsoft, through the Carbon Disclosure Project.  We have implemented an internal carbon fee, and are raising the fee to cover Scope 3 emissions.  We invest in high quality carbon offsets for the emissions that we do produce. These offsets fund critical work in reforestation, REDD+ forest preservation, and solar water heaters across the globe. 

We are committed to powering all of our operations efficiently with electricity from renewable sources by 2025. 80% of our office footprint is powered by wind and solar power, including partnerships with local utilities and power providers. We are driving efficiency innovations across our portfolio, spearheaded by our award-winning building in Silicon Valley, which was designed to be Net Zero Energy. As we expand our presence worldwide, our goal is to scale and operate the most reliable, innovative, efficient and sustainable data centers in the world. In our award-winning data center in Oregon, we leverage outdoor air for cooling for up to 300 days of the year and plentiful hydropwer produces sources for low carbon energy.

At our workplaces, the collective impact of our employee activity adds up, so we are addressing this through resource conservation.

Green buildings: Over 60% of our office footprint has green building certifications. In compliance with these standards, we have been reducing our waste in construction, demolition, and operations.

Office waste: We measure our waste generation in our offices across the globe, and through education and programs, we are targeting and tracking improvements in our recycling and composting rates with a target of 90% diversion from landfill.

Water: We track our water footprint and take action to conserve this precious resource by sourcing reclaimed water at some of our largest sites. We report our footprint to the Carbon Disclosure Project Water report every year through our parent company Microsoft.