Hazardous waste

The EU Directive on the Restriction of the Use of Certain Hazardous Substances in Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive 2005 (RHOS) applies to all our businesses in the UK, Germany, Czech Republic and Ireland.

This places responsibility on the producer and the end user to ensure that restricted substances are not used in the roll-out of our network or in our handsets.

We have procedures to handle all hazardous waste that accumulates in our offices and networks. Several recycling schemes operate throughout O2 to recover, among other things, redundant batteries, and we recover and reuse old mobile phones.

We comply with rules on handling and treating hazardous waste appropriately. Under EU law, products such as batteries and fluorescent tubes contain hazardous waste, and we use third-party suppliers to dispose of these properly.

The revised hazardous waste list incorporates a range of newly defined hazardous wastes including certain everyday items such as computer monitors. As a producer we are subject to inspection by the competent authorities.

Changes to the law will encourage reduction in the use of hazardous materials and in the creation of hazardous waste.

Our operations neither create hazardous waste nor use hazardous substances in the sort of quantities that would require the collection of meaningful statistics. The hazardous substances in common products that we use, for example fluorescent tubes and cell site batteries, are tightly managed. Any waste arising is controlled through the correct waste-disposal procedures.

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