Environmental impacts

O2’s business is to provide mobile communications services.

Our operations are less harmful to the environment than those, for example, of manufacturing or mining, but we recognise that we do have an impact – in our energy and water consumption, our waste disposal and emissions, through our supply chain and network technology, and in the visual impact of what we do.

To ensure we manage our impact on the environment and identify opportunities for improving our performance, we have rolled out the international environmental standard ISO 14001 to all our businesses. We measure our activities carefully and set targets for each of the areas in which our business affects the environment.

‘Did you know that 95% of the energy used by the UK’s mobile phone chargers is wasted energy? Only 5% is actually used to charge phones and the rest is used when the charger is plugged into the wall but not switched off at the socket. That’s over 50,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions that could be avoided if we all just unplug our chargers after use - the equivalent to almost 500 football pitches worth of forest every year.’  Future Forests

Our environmental management system has identified the following key environmental issues facing O2. Details of the data we collect and the targets for improvement we set are published in our annual Corporate Responsibility Report.

We seek to reduce our overall energy use – split 80:20 respectively between our networks and our shops and offices – and to buy more electricity from renewable sources where possible. We aim to balance our growth with a policy of due care.

We are involved in several initiatives to improve our energy profile.

• Carbon Trust programme - O2 is working with the Carbon Trust to help reduce carbon emissions and to better understand the effect of our business on climate change.
  
• Energy performance management - Energy is at the heart of sustainable development. We continue to develop policies to manage and measure our performance. We have aligned our objectives with the European Commission - Environment Action Programme, which seeks to tackle climate change, protect nature and wildlife and to preserve natural resources. Energy consumption and the associated emissions that come from running our networks, buildings and transport require our full commitment. By partnering with the Carbon Trust we intend to develop a Carbon Management Programme designed to systematically cut energy consumption and emissions over time.
  
• Renewable Energy - Our use of renewable energy increases every year. In 2005/06 the proportion of renewable energy used by O2 reached its highest level to date, 38 per cent. We continue to explore opportunities for further alternative energy solutions.
  
• Alternative power initiatives - O2 is exploring opportunities for alternative and renewable power. In Ireland we work with Airtricity’s renewable energy to power our offices. We are currently assessing all offices and base stations across O2 for similar solutions. One of these is the potential use of wind turbines on network mast constructions.

We have established a comprehensive recycling system throughout our major buildings - including paper, cans and plastic/paper cups - with targets for office waste recycling and plans to include a number of other identified waste streams.

We also operate Fonebak®, a mobile handset recycling scheme, across our business. Through Fonebak®, our customers, suppliers and staff have an assurance that their old phones are safely disposed of or re-used. We run schemes through our retail shops, in our offices, by post, via the internet or - for contributing supplier businesses - direct with our recycling partner, Shields.

We are involved in several initiatives to reduce, reuse and recycle our wastes.

• Paper waste - Shred-It
  
• Waste and recycling rates - We have made good progress in our offices to separate, collect and recycle paper, cans and plastic cups and we have also begun to look at how some of our contractors handle waste. In Ireland, we have an integrated waste management and recycling process and a biodegradable waste-food processing system in the employee restaurants at our main office locations.
  
• Packaging and IT - We constantly aim to identify other waste streams such as the packaging of our products and computer waste from our offices. We have successfully reduced the packaging involved in the delivery and installation of our network equipment by working closely with a network equipment vendor. We are also working with a new partner to find solutions for IT recycling in offices, which includes a total solution for recycling cathode-ray tubes from computer screens and the installation of refurbished equipment for schools in developing countries.
  
• Mobile phones - Our phone recycling schemes ensure that customers, employees and the public can safely dispose of redundant handsets for recycling or re-use. Access more information on our handset recycling schemes.
  
• Network equipment - We aim to make sure that equipment used in our networks is designated for re-use or upgrade and do not expect a lot of waste to arise from our network building. Redundant network equipment is processed for re-use and recycled through our environmentally accredited partners.

We have a developing plan to reduce our CO2 emissions in line with the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse-gas emissions and the UK government's commitment on global warming. This includes reducing refrigerants in air conditioning and ensuring our diesel tanks are all secondary protected against leakage or spills.

To meet our targets we are carrying out the following two programmes:

• Ozone depleting replacement programme - We use refrigerant gases in our air conditioning and the quantities have increased with the roll-out of our new networks. However, we have shifted from ozone-depleting HCFC gases to HFC gases that have no ozone-depleting potential.
  
• Forced air replacement - We are researching the feasibility of introducing refrigerant-free air conditioning, such as forced-air systems. This project is at an early stage and is part of our developing relationship with the Carbon Trust.

We have an ongoing programme of increasing water efficiency.

Reducing carbon emissions is a real challenge but we have developed climate mitigation strategies that include decreasing business mileage and encouraging the use of technology rather than travel.

• Use of technology - We encourage the use of technology rather than business  travel at all times; our Environmental Forum, for example, meets by audio conferencing.
  
• Management information - We are striving to improve our information on transport emissions, the main usage being network maintenance and retail distribution, both of which are done by contractors. We continue to capture information on the energy consumption of our main contractors in order to understand the full impact of our operations on the environment.
  
• Green transport plan – Following a green travel survey within O2 UK to ascertain where we could make changes to our transport use, we introduced Liftshare, a car-share scheme which is currently in use at our Leeds, Bury and Preston Brook sites.