Building Sustainability Into the Office, From Materials to Operations
Cloudflare has set a broad goal: build the most sustainable network possible. But the company is also trying to make sure those environmental values are tangible for employees in its physical spaces. To that end, sustainability has become a core principle in how the company designs, builds, and operates its global offices.
The effort spans three main areas: sustainable construction materials, efficient building operations, and renewable energy purchasing. The thinking is that buying recycled or regenerative products alone isn't enough—how a space is run matters just as much as what goes into it.
Rethinking Materials in Construction and Design
Since 2020, Cloudflare has been rethinking how teams use physical space, treating its offices as a kind of sustainability learning lab. As it gathers data on different systems, the company plans to roll out successful concepts to other locations.
The acoustic baffles used in recent San Francisco and London redesigns—and in a new office under construction—are a prime example. Open offices need effective sound management, but traditional baffles are often made from synthetic fibers that add new plastic to the waste stream. Cloudflare instead chose FilaSorb panels by AcouFelt, which are made from post-consumer plastic beverage bottles diverted from landfills. Each square foot of the felt contains fibers from more than 10 recycled 20-ounce bottles, and the panels have a useful life of over 20 years before they can be recycled again. The product is certified for the Living Building Challenge, a rigorous regenerative building standard.
The offices also use BAUX Acoustic Wood Wool panels, which recarbonate during production. The panels absorb over 6.9 kg per square meter of CO2—more than 70% of the total measured emissions from their entire manufacturing lifecycle. Their insulating properties reduce the energy needed for heating and cooling in fluctuating weather.
Flooring is another focus. Cloudflare selected Interface's Net Effect Collection, which uses 100% recycled content nylon, including postconsumer nylon from discarded fishing nets. The nets are collected through the Net-Works partnership, which provides income to small fishing villages in the Philippines while cleaning up beaches and waters. The nets are sold to Aquafil, which converts them into yarn for carpet tile.
Keeping Furniture Out of Landfills
One statistic stood out to the design team: 8.5 million tons of office furniture ends up in landfills annually—a figure from before the pandemic dramatically shifted real estate footprints and left commercial vacancy rates above 30% in cities like San Francisco and New York. In response, Cloudflare has made it a standard practice to reuse, and sometimes fully repurpose, existing furniture across projects. The company also lends unused office chairs and other furniture to employees working from home, so they don't need to buy new pieces.
Operating Spaces Efficiently
Construction materials are only part of the equation. Cloudflare is trialing sustainable operations concepts in its spaces, starting with water management. A 500-gallon rainwater harvesting system installed above outdoor bike storage in the San Francisco office supplies gray water for the building's extensive plant collection, which was chosen for low water consumption but still needs irrigation.
Waste reduction is also a cultural effort. Bevi sparkling and flavored water dispensers, alongside traditional soda fountains, have removed bottled water from facilities entirely. Bulk snacks now reduce the packaging that enters recycling centers and landfills.
Renewable Energy in a Shared Grid
In San Francisco, the office navigates the complexities of renewable power sourcing on a shared grid. Energy is purchased through Pacific Gas and Electric's Supergreen Service, but the company doesn't stop there. To ensure its usage is fully renewable, Cloudflare separately purchases additional renewable energy as if it weren't already on a sustainable power plan.
Next Up: Urban Bee Colonies
Looking ahead, Cloudflare is preparing to install EntroBees—managed on-site honey bee colonies—at one of its global locations. With bee populations in decline and a quarter of species at risk of extinction, the colonies aim to provide habitat for urban bees and produce honey for local employees. They'll also serve a more technical purpose: feeding entropy into the LavaRand system that generates randomness for Cloudflare's entire encryption infrastructure.
