PlayStation® and the environment

What we’re doing to reduce our environmental impact, and how you can help.

Our environmental footprint

As well as providing the best place to play, at PlayStation we have made a number of ambitious commitments to address the environmental footprint of our products and business activities. Read on to find out more.

Our principles are as follows:

  1. We encourage environmental activities that are appropriate to our business, products, services, scale, and environmental impacts.
  2. We promote prevention of pollution and continual improvement of our environmental management system.
  3. We endeavour to comply with relevant environmental legislation and other requirements and aim to improve our management in respect of our environmental obligations.
  4. To promote environmental preservation activities, we maintain an environmental management organization accessible to all divisions and employees
  5. We are committed to achieving the following important environmental management assignments:

a. To assure product environmental compliance we aim to promote product design that complies with each country’s latest environmental regulations

b. To minimize the environmental impact of our products we aim to assess product environmental impacts in research, development, and design, and promote both product design and product recycling technologies with reduced environmental impacts.

  1. We promote activities that contribute to environmental improvement as part of each division’s regular business.
  2. We aim to improve and maintain our environmental management system through scheduled environmental auditing.
  3. To promote environmental management within the whole company, we establish and periodically review environmental objectives, targets, and programs.
  4. We will disclose environmental information on environmental technology, material use, product development, and the status of environmental management in a form accessible to the public.

Key initiatives

We are committed to a number of government policy initiatives addressing global environmental concerns.

UNEP VR360 video educating children on climate impact and actions, made using Dreams on PlayStation 4.

United Nations Playing for the Planet Alliance

PlayStation is part of the UN’s Playing for the Planet Alliance. Launched as part of the UN Secretary-General’s Climate Action Summit in September 2019, it’s a consortium of 21 video gaming companies, formally committed to taking action on climate change using the reach of our platforms.

Here are just some of the initiatives we have agreed to undertake:

  • We estimate our commitments to PlayStation®4 energy efficiency will result in around 30 million tonnes of avoided carbon-equivalent emissions by 2030* (equivalent to Denmark’s total CO2 emissions in 2017).     
  • With PS5, we will include the option   to suspend gameplay with much lower power con-sumption than PS4 (which we estimate can be achieved at around 0.5W).
  • We have completed a carbon footprint assessment of our different gaming services and provide advice to consumers on efficient console set up and use (see the section [our products>Energy efficiency>How can I minimize my console energy use?]).
  • We will work with industry and climate experts to support the UN to develop a reference / re-source pack for use by game developers that wish to include or understand climate change themes and issues for game development.
  • We will investigate the possibility of developing VR applications that raise awareness of climate change.

United Nations Playing for the Planet Alliance

PlayStation is part of the UN’s Playing for the Planet Alliance. Launched as part of the UN Secretary-General’s Climate Action Summit in September 2019, it’s a consortium of 21 video gaming companies, formally committed to taking action on climate change using the reach of our platforms.

Here are just some of the initiatives we have agreed to undertake:

  • We estimate our commitments to PlayStation®4 energy efficiency will result in around 30 million tonnes of avoided carbon-equivalent emissions by 2030* (equivalent to Denmark’s total CO2 emissions in 2017).     
  • With PS5, we will include the option   to suspend gameplay with much lower power con-sumption than PS4 (which we estimate can be achieved at around 0.5W).
  • We have completed a carbon footprint assessment of our different gaming services and provide advice to consumers on efficient console set up and use (see the section [our products>Energy efficiency>How can I minimize my console energy use?]).
  • We will work with industry and climate experts to support the UN to develop a reference / re-source pack for use by game developers that wish to include or understand climate change themes and issues for game development.
  • We will investigate the possibility of developing VR applications that raise awareness of climate change.

*Around 1.8 MtCO2e of this is due to compliance with standby and networked standby requirements within the European Union standby directive (EC 1275/2008 as amended by EU 801/2013) within EU countries.

European Union Games Console Voluntary Agreement (VA)

European Union Games Console Voluntary Agreement (VA)

Within the European Union, PlayStation  , together with Microsoft and Nintendo, are signatories of the Games Console Voluntary Agreement (EU Directive 2009/125/EC). Formally recognised by the European Commission in 2015, the Voluntary Agreement (VA) sets out measures to improve the energy and resource efficiency of games consoles (see efficientgaming.eu), including:

  • Mandatory time limits for automatic power down.
  • Maximum power caps for consoles in media and navigation modes. 
  • Requirement for console manufacturers to publish the power consumptions of their console.   
  • Commitment to provide out-of-warranty repair service and provider users information to help maintain their consoles.
  • Commitments to improve the recycling of consoles.  

Over the lifetime of current generation consoles, it is estimated that the VA will drive energy savings of 48 TWh (equivalent to the annual electricity production of Portugal). The agreement is reviewed every two years to ensure continuous improvement.

Our products

Learn more about how we've reduced our products' environmental impact, including the energy use of your PlayStation console.

Our supply chain

Trucking and air freight are the two modes of transport with the highest carbon emissions. Across our global operations, we transport goods by water and rail in bulk wherever possible in order to keep transport emissions as low as possible.

The majority of our peripherals are bulk shipped from China and packaged locally, which substantially reduces the number of shipping containers used to transport them. 

Office activities 

We have developed site-specific targets and activities in order to reduce the environmental impact of our office-based operations. So far, we have undertaken the following activities:

Energy 

Energy efficiency initiatives have been delivered across many of our global sites. Across all our UK offices, we purchase 100% renewable electricity, and have reduced total energy consumption by 12% compared to 2015. 

In our London operations offices, we have completed a major refurbishment programme which has reduced energy consumption by 19% since 2015 – despite adding 15% more floor space and a staff gymnasium. 

In America, we are investigating using 100% purchased renewable electricity. So far, we have achieved this at our offices in San Mateo. We are also installing energy saving devices at all sites including LED lights and motion detection systems as part of our ongoing office refurbishment programme. We also have Electric Vehicle charging stations present at our sites.   

In Asia, our staff are encouraged to save energy through good practice and energy saving technologies are considered and included in office refurbishment works.  

Recycling

Across our UK operations offices, we achieved a 74% recycling rate by the end of the 2018. We also achieved zero waste to landfill – with waste either being recycled, sent to aerobic digestion or incinerated to create energy. 

In addition, we are targeting waste reduction and have so far removed all water bottles and Tetrapaks from our canteens. Now, just one in every five coffees purchased in our café are done so using a single use disposable cup. 

In America, we have identified and mapped all our waste streams, allowing us to target specific wastes like single-use plastics, which we have eliminated from the food service areas. We are seeking to minimise food waste and have calculated our carbon “foodprint” in order to set a reduction target for the future. 

Our offices across Asia have also introduced recycling systems to segregate recyclable materials in order to drive their recycling rates in the region.

Community activities

Find out how our staff can get involved with local and regional community activities to support conservation, environmental and charitable initiatives.

Further information

For further information please see the Sony environmental page and our Modern Slavery Act page.