Suppliers

Advocating for environmental protection in our supply chain

We work closely with our main suppliers to understand how they are managing their environmental effects and to make sure that there is continuous improvement in the management of their environmental standards. 

Our suppliers are expected to comply with all relevant local and national environmental regulations and we work with them to help minimise the effects of their businesses.

We also require key suppliers to relay the principles of our ethical and environmental procurement policies through their own supply chains.

We benchmark suppliers against the ISO 14001 standard and have developed a series of requirements for our major suppliers.

We use a self-assessment questionnaire and auditing to check they are complying with our policies. During the year, we sent five questionnaires to suppliers and conducted two audits of major suppliers. Both were with handset suppliers, which will supply new O2-branded products across the O2 Group.

Industry co-operation

In 2005/06 we began to work closely with some key suppliers, including Nokia and Ericsson, to help us reduce long-term energy consumption in our networks.

This could be achieved, for example, with switching devices that automatically shut down when not in use.

Through this collaboration we have also developed a set of specific environmental requirements for our key suppliers including a request for an environmental benefits statement for any new product being offered to O2.