Community Water Programs Water is a key resource we share with those who live where we operate, so we look for opportunities to return water to these communities. For example, we partnered with the City of Umatilla and the West Extension Irrigation District to deliver water to farmers in Oregon. Instead of going to a wastewater treatment plant, our clean cooling water goes into a canal that delivers the water to farmers for use in irrigation. With this project, we reuse up to 96% of the wastewater we discharge from our data centers in this region. In 2021, we funded watershed restoration efforts by The Nature Conservancy in Cape Town, South Africa, and Recycled Water We evaluate the opportunity to reduce our consumption of potable water and are actively expanding our use of nonpotable and recycled water for cooling purposes. In certain regions, we work directly with utilities and regulators to obtain approval for the use of recycled water in direct evaporative cooling technology. We are continuing to work with water utilities in various regions to expand this recycled water infrastructure. Through these actions, we are actively contributing to sustainable water solutions by reducing our impact on the local potable water supply for the communities where we operate. On-Site Water Treatment We use on-site, modular water-treatment systems in multiple regions, which allow us to remove scale-forming minerals and reuse water for more cycles. Increasing our “cycles of concentration” contributes to reducing the water intake needed to cool our data centers. Water Stewardship in Data Centers Amazon knows water is a precious resource. Our holistic approach minimizes both energy and water consumption in our data center operations and guides our water use strategy for each AWS Region. This starts with evaluating climate patterns, local water management and availability, and opportunities to avoid using potable water sources whenever possible. We are committed to conserving and reusing water, both in our on-site operations and by working with private and public entities to support water availability in communities where we operate data centers. Evaporative Cooling Our preferred cooling strategy for data centers uses evaporative technologies. We analyze the weather in each region and monitor our cooling system, which is designed to maximize environmental cooling and minimize water use. During the hottest months of the year, we have optimized systems to minimize water usage. Outside air is cooled through an evaporative process and pushed into the server rooms to keep hardware at stable operating temperatures. With this design, even our largest data centers at full capacity would use, on average, about the same water in a year as only 25 U.S. households. During cooler months, where possible, outside air is supplied directly to the data center without needing to be cooled. We are constantly innovating the design of our cooling systems to further reduce water usage. We are installing sensors that provide real-time water-use data to operators and sustainability teams. By analyzing this data, we can identify opportunities to reduce water usage and rapidly make operational changes. São Paulo, Brazil. These completed projects have restored 365 hectares of land and increased water supply availability by 45 million gallons per year. Through partnerships with Water.org and WaterAid in India and Indonesia, we initially intended to provide clean water to 165,000 people. By the time these partnerships concluded in early 2022, we surpassed our goal and provided clean water and sanitation to over 250,000 community members. In 2022, we began supporting a new set of projects, which include wetland creation in the Thames River Basin in England and water quality projects in the Chesapeake Bay watershed in the U.S. 2021 Sustainability Report Introduction I Environment I Society I Governance I Appendix 37