Microsoft is building a data center in a tiny Indian village. Locals allege it’s dumping industrial waste.

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“These big companies think they can enter small villages like ours, take our land, and destroy it.”

  • Microsoft is building a data center in Mekaguda, a village in the southern Indian state of Telangana, which is expected to start operations by 2025. About 70% of the construction has been completed.
  • Last month, the state government intervened after Microsoft cited problems with the local village council.
  • A group of local residents has filed a petition against Microsoft, claiming encroachment and the dumping of industrial waste in a nearby body of water. The court hearing for the petition is pending.

Addition: Why are E-Waste Strategies in Need for Sustainable Data Centers?

E-waste in data centers encompasses a wide array of discarded IT equipment such as servers, power distribution units, and other electronic components that are no longer in use. Despite the rapid pace of technological upgrades, the alarming statistic from the UN forecasts that e-waste volumes could reach 74.7 metric tons globally by 2030.

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Old shredded hard drives are also produced by data centers? But I guess these locals want to see some profit from their neighboring data center.

Shredded SSDs? It's a ceramic dust.

By ceramic dust you mean it is not poisonous? Or are some rare earth materials / heavy metals in there that poison drinking water?