In 2017, we announced a commitment to making our operations carbon neutral by 2025. This is the next logical step in our long-term greenhouse gas (GHG) avoidance strategy, which also includes an undertaking to reduce GHG emissions to levels of the year 2000 by 2020. We met our 2020 target in 2017 and in 2018 continued to reduce emmissions.
Facilities management staff design and operate our facilities based on robust environmental standards. In addition, our IT operations personnel is committed to optimizing energy consumption in our data centers. In 2018 our total energy consumption decreased by 1 GWh although our employee number increased.
Our e-waste comes from the data center servers, IT equipment including PCs, peripherals, and a range of mobile devices. Our servers and IT equipment are either resold or recycled in an environmentally friendly manner depending on their condition. In 2018 the amount of e-waste recycled increased by 9%.
