At our data centers, water is mainly used in two ways: evaporative cooling and humidification. Thanks to innovative design, our data centers are over 80 percent more water-efficient than the average data center, and we are always striving to become more efficient. In addition, we also support projects that restore local watersheds near our water-strained data center communities. In 2020, we restored nearly as much water as we consumed to the watersheds where we operate. To date, we have contracted 9 water projects in four high-risk regions, and expect to restore approximately 2.25 million cubic meters (~595 million gallons) each year. (Updated on August 16, 2021 to correct the total volume of water we restored.)
At Facebook, sustainability means more than operating responsibly and minimizing our environmental impact — it means having a positive effect on communities around the world and within our supply chain. In September, we announced our most ambitious goal yet: to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions across our value chain in 2030. Science tells us that the next 10 years will be critically important for curbing climate change. Given that reality, reducing emissions across our value chain — our hardware, the goods and services we purchase, construction of our facilities, and business travel — is one of our top priorities.
As we look to accelerate support in local communities, we recognize that climate change is experienced differently across regions and groups of people, specifically Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC), and economically distressed communities. Many of these communities already experience the worst impacts of climate change — extreme temperatures, pollution, or weather patterns — due to the lack of access to adequate resources. To address this lack of access, we support projects such as a locally managed reforestation and sustainable development project in Kenya and Uganda, which will help sustain existing income and improve crop yields for commodities such as fruit, nuts, and timber for smallholder farmers. Our purchase of carbon credits also created a new source of income in the form of direct payments to the farmers.
Beyond doing our part to reduce our environmental footprint, we also leverage our core products and services to build community and accelerate access to climate science information and climate action, often partnering with others to scale solutions that help fight climate change. For instance, in 2020, Facebook launched the Climate Science Information Center, which aims to share climate science and clear actions we can all take to fight the climate crisis. More than 60 million people globally have visited the platform since its inception with an average of 240,000 visitors every day.