Telecom giant Verizon, tech powerhouse Infosys, and Lysol and Calgon parent Reckitt Benckiser (RB) have become the first global companies to join Amazon in the Climate Pledge announced by the tech giant last year, promising to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement on climate change 10 years ahead of schedule.
The news Tuesday morning comes nine months after Amazon announced the pledge, promising to become net carbon neutral by 2040. From the beginning, the company said it wanted others to join the pledge. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said at time that he was hearing “a lot of interest” in the idea in conversations with leaders of other global companies.
Amazon says it “plans to announce many more signatories throughout 2020.”
Each signatory is an existing Amazon partner. Verizon and Infosys, which work closely with Amazon Web Services, had already made separate commitments on climate change that put their carbon reduction initiatives largely on track to meet the timeline laid out in the Climate Pledge. UK-based RB, a key consumer goods partner for Amazon.com, is accelerating its efforts to reduce its carbon emissions, Amazon says in the announcement.
“It has not been easy — 2020 has presented us with unexpected challenges — from the COVID-19 pandemic to a serious reckoning on racial equity,” says Kara Hurst, Amazon’s vice president and head of worldwide sustainability, in the post announcing the additional signatories. “As we come to terms with these difficult circumstances, we are adamant that we need to continue addressing the other crisis which is upon us — the climate crisis.”
Amazon’s announcement last year came amid public pressure from the group Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, which urged the company to set more specific goals on climate change. Bezos said in announcing the pledge that the company was “done being in the middle of the herd on this issue.”
In January, Microsoft announced that it intends be carbon negative by 2030, removing more carbon from the environment than it emits each year, and said it plans to remove enough carbon by 2050 to make up for all of its emissions and electrical consumption since its founding 45 years ago.
