2022 is a pivotal year for Canada's sustainability journey. For one, the Government of Canada is refreshing its Federal Sustainable Development Strategy (FSDS) under a strengthened Federal Sustainable Development Act. Through the expanded Act, 99 public sector organizations are now accountable to play their part to reduce emissions to below 2005 levels.The Government of Canada is also rolling out its National Strategy - Moving Forward Together: Canada's 2030 Agenda National Strategy. This strategy takes a more holistic view of how Canadian society can contribute to make domestic and international communities more sustainable.These plans will drive the sprint to 2030 that will hopefully result in measurable progress towards a greener future. They are also a call to action for us all to do what is needed to reduce our carbon footprints.As one of the largest public buyers of goods and services in Canada, the Federal Government has tremendous influence to drive change in the marketplace. By doing things like evaluating bidders of major projects on their sustainability record, the Government of Canada can use its purchasing power to reward innovation and encourage sustainable technology adoption.This approach is consistent with many of Canada's global peers. For instance, as of April 2022, all the UK's National Health Services' (NHS) procurements will include a minimum 10% net zero and social value weighting. This action is part of a wider roadmap that will eventually require all NHS suppliers to have a carbon reduction plan.From our perspective, Pure Storage's strategy has always been to anticipate change and be ahead of the curve. Our 2021 Environmental, Social and Governance report outlines in detail how we intend to forge our own sustainability path.You may be wondering how a data storage technologies can make a meaningful impact? To answer this question, think about the digital world's evolution and the pandemic's accelerating effect.Underlying infrastructure within Data Centers is powering the new digital services that we all rely on daily. Data centers also happen to be major greenhouse gas emitters. They require immense amounts of energy to cool and operate 24 hours a day.Currently, about 2% of global carbon emissions can be linked back to data centers. This is the equivalent of all the world's airline industries combined. With the expansion of digital services, this number is expected to rise to 3.2% in 2025 and 14% by 2040.The technologies that go into these data centers matter and can make or break emission reduction intentions. There's an opportunity for data centers to be more sustainable, and it lies in the one area where effective power utilization is going down, not up: data storage. Storage is one of the few technologies where we, as an industry, can lower power consumption of the data center while increasing performance, density, and efficiency.In the rush to meet soaring demand during the pandemic, the decades-old data storage sector responded with systems still built on old magnetic disk technologies which are not only are inefficient from a power perspective but also a significant contributor to e-waste.Going forward, the solution is the replacement of these disk technologies with next generation Flash technologies. New generations of flash are far more efficient per terabyte than spinning disk and are also more powerful. Flash technology truly reflects the sustainable data centre of the future and through their use ever growing storage demands will be met with fewer servers that require less energy and cooling.Another angle that data centres can improve from a sustainability perspective relates to technology life cycles. Traditionally, servers and hardware for data centers were delivered once and then 'junked' during periodic upgrading. This old way of doing things runs counter to increasingly prevalent zero-waste targets.The alternative to this traditional upgrading method is using a service or subscription model. Under these models, products do not become obsolete or require wholesale replacement like traditional systems. Rather, the Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) maintains responsibility to maintain, upgrade and recycle the product over its lifespan. This simple action not only reduces e-waste but also reduces the carbon footprint required to produce and deliver new hardware to the customer. Although impactful, this element is rarely considered and included in net zero strategies.With the clock ticking, we all have a role to play to help Canada meet our 2030 emission reduction targets. As the world increasingly becomes more reliant on digital technologies, we need to think about the role that data centres play in supporting this digital world and the impact they could potentially have on our environment. Flash technology and as a service model are tactics that organizations can implement tomorrow as part of their storage strategies that would immediately have a positive impact on their sustainability agendas.Brent Allen is the Canadian Country Manager for Pure Storage