These add to Google's existing sustainability efforts. From 2017 to 2018, it cut its product shipment carbon emissions by 40 percent. Its Power Project will provide one million energy-saving Nest thermostats to families in need by 2023, and many Nest products are already made with post-consumer recycled plastic.

Switching to recycled content isn't always easy, though. As Fast Company reports, when Google's hardware team began working on a yet-to-be-announced product that will be out later this year, it decided to swap industry-standard polyester fabric for fabric made from recycled bottles. It reportedly took the team two years to make sure the material met design and manufacturing requirements and that vendors could supply it at scale. Now, each unit of the mystery product will reuse a third of a plastic bottle. That's the kind of thing we may see more frequently beginning in 2022.