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| We aim to minimise any negative impact we have on the environment through efficient environmental management and by promoting sustainable development. |
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External view: "As one of the biggest corporate users of mobile phones we're confident and happy with our involvement in the Fonebak scheme with O2 and Shields Environmental. It was exceptionally easy to set up. What appeals most is that it provides an audit trail so that we can verify how we are dealing with our waste and track the money we are raising through it for our chosen charity, Water Aid."
Becky Toal, Environmental Programme Manager, the Co-op Group
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Response from O2: We are encouraged to promote the Fonebak scheme to more customers by companies such as the Co-op Group. Together with our customers we will have a greater impact on environmental protection.
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CO2 emissions from energy |
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Total
consumption |
MWh |
CO2 conversion factor |
kg CO2 |
Tonnes
CO2 |
Buildings (Group-wide offices and UK retail premises). |
|
Electricity |
Kwh |
55,927,506 |
55,928 |
0.43 |
24,048,828 |
24,049 |
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Natural gas |
Kwh |
32,310,347 |
32,310 |
0.19 |
6,138,966 |
6,139 |
|
Network (switching and cell sites) |
|
Electricity (excluding O2 Airwave) |
Kwh |
213,090,130 |
213,090 |
0.43 |
91,628,756 |
91,629 |
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Natural gas |
Kwh |
5,364,905 |
5,365 |
0.19 |
1,019,332 |
1,019 |
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|
|
Total |
122,835,881 |
122,836 |
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Water consumption |
Buildings (offices) |
Total |
|
|
Water (excludes O2 Ireland, Manx Telecom and O2 Airwave) |
m3 |
3,184,252 |
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Waste and recycling |
|
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Total |
Tonnes |
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General waste generation (excludes O2 Airwave) |
kg |
2,707,065 |
2,707 |
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Goods recycled (excludes O2 Airwave and O2 Germany) |
kg |
388,490 |
389 |
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At O2 we want to manage our business in a sustainable way, providing exciting and profitable mobile services without compromising the environment. We aim to minimise any negative impact we have through efficient environmental management and by promoting sustainable development.
Within each of our operating businesses a senior manager champions our Group environmental strategy and reports to the environmental forum, chaired by our Environment Champion, David McGlade, Chief Executive Officer of O2 UK. The forum meets twice a year to set targets and reports regularly to the Executive Committee and the Board.
Our strengths in managing environmental risks were recognised publicly during the year when we were again included in the Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes. In response to the Index assessment, we are improving our monitoring systems and are refining our environmental data. We are working with some of our main contractors to capture some of their environmental impacts in our figures for the coming year.
We continue to make progress in most areas where we have set specific improvement targets. We have surpassed, for example, our target to recover mobile phones for re-use and recycling by over 71,000 phones.
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| Supply chain | Energy | Waste and recycling | Mobile handsets and equipment | Pollution | Consulting with communities | Greener ways to work | Certification |
A greener supply chain
In 2003/04 we launched our Group-wide Environmental Procurement policy to help us source products in the most environmentally responsible way and spread best practice in our supply chain.
O2's local and international suppliers provide goods and services that include network infrastructure, mobile devices, distribution transport, IT hardware and software and branded clothing and merchandise. We will work closely with them to help them minimise any shortfall in their operations.
Our target last year was to engage with key suppliers to satisfy ourselves of their environmental performance. To raise awareness about ethical sourcing, we distributed a self-assessment questionnaire to our main suppliers. During 2004/05 we will continue to work closely with them to help us implement our environmental procurement policy. This will include supply chains that have been identified as having greatest potential risk. Details of how our ethical procurement policy deals with human rights and working conditions are on page 20 of this report.
Coltan, a mineral used in the circuit boards of mobile phones, has been subject to wide-spread concerns due to its illegal mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo. This mining activity has allegedly fuelled ongoing civil unrest in the country and at the same time threatened the habitats of highland gorillas. We have engaged with our suppliers of mobile phones and required them to investigate and inform us about their sourcing of Coltan. Our Chairman David Varney raised further awareness about this topic in his speech to the Institute of Directors in April 2003.
Energy consumption
We seek to reduce our overall energy use, while buying more electricity from renewable sources. As a growing business with an expanding network, we try to balance our business aspirations with a policy of due care for the environment.
For the purpose of this report we will cover the energy and water consumption as well as waste generation by our offices and networks. These figures do not cover our transport data or our retail operations outside the UK, as energy consumption is relatively small by comparison and accurate data is difficult to get. We do not currently measure materials or waste used, or discharges to water. The figures also omit emission conversions to NOx and SOx, emissions from the operations of subcontractors who maintain our networks and distribute our products. In future we aim to capture and report on these too.
Our network accounts for more than 70 per cent of our reported energy consumption, with the rest associated with offices and call centres. For the Group overall we set a target of achieving a 10 per cent use of electricity from renewable sources by 2008, this target will be reviewed during 2004/05. We have made progress on this target in all countries where we operate except the Isle of Man.
Our operations in the UK have achieved 20 per cent use of electricity from renewable sources (excludes the O2 Airwave network). In Ireland the figure is 32 per cent and in Germany 12 per cent. We are currently renewing our energy supply contract in Ireland, which should significantly raise the proportion of renewable energy we use.
We aim to improve our data for water consumption, so that we can express it as a total and per employee, incorporating figures from key contractors.
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CO2 emissions (Tonnes) |
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Buildings (offices) |
2002/03 |
2003/04 |
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Electricity |
20,255 |
24,049 |
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Natural gas |
3,009 |
6,139 |
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Network (switching centres and cell sites) |
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Electricity |
110,895 |
91,629 |
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Natural gas |
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1,019 |
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CO2 emissions |
134,159 |
122,836 |
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| Figures for 2002/03 exclude any estimated figures that were included in the 2002/03 report and figures for O2 Netherlands that was sold in June 2003 |
Waste management and recycling
We have established schemes at all of our major sites to separately collect and recycle paper, cans and plastic cups. Our target is to increase the proportion of office waste recycled by 10 per cent by March 2005.
Besides the office waste referred to above, we have identified a number of other waste streams which are capable of being recycled – overall we believe that we currently achieve a recycling rate of wastes of around 10 per cent in the UK. In 2003/04 we recycled 389 tons of waste Group-wide, which includes handset and battery component recycling as well as materials recovered from network sites. We recognise that we need to establish better systems to audit and manage our waste systems and to track our recycling performance. This is one of our planned activities for 2004/05.
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| Supply chain | Energy | Waste and recycling | Mobile handsets and equipment | Pollution | Consulting with communities | Greener ways to work | Certification |
Recycling and re-use of mobile handsets and equipment
Fonebak, the fully managed recycling solution for mobile handsets and accessories, operated across O2 – with the exception of Germany – by Shields Environmental, has exceeded our expectations. We encourage customers and employees to hand in phones for re-use or recycling, either by depositing them in boxes in our shops and offices or by freepost.
In the first year of Fonebak we recovered 20,000 handsets and set a target to double this in 2003/04. We actually recovered 111,262 phones and these have been refurbished for re-use or recycled, leaving only a small amount of inert plastics from the batteries being sent for controlled landfill. Shields Environmental have set up a recycling facility in Romania to ensure the responsible disposal of mobiles where these are sold for re-use. Details about the material recovered through recycling are included in the chart below.
In Germany we have recently launched a similar initiative with Greener Solution, which has included an internal campaign to raise awareness about mobile recycling among employees.
A proportion of the revenue from the sale of refurbished phones is donated to chosen charities, which also acts as an incentive for customers to hand in their redundant phones. To build on our previous experience of tree planting projects with Future Forest we decided through Fonebak to support Rainforest Concern, an international charity working to combat global warming by conserving forests and their biodiversity. In Ireland we have also partnered with The National Tree Council of Ireland to support a tree-planting initiative of 15,000 trees.
In accordance with our commitment to reduce the environmental impact of our supply chain we have extended Fonebak to corporate customers, among them the Co-op Group and AT&T.
Base station equipment throughout our networks is upgradeable. In March 2004 we signed a contract with one of our suppliers to ensure our third generation (3G) mobile systems will be processed for re-use or recycling.
We are currently rolling out our new Airwave network and are not expecting to refurbish or recycle any of the network materials within the next few years. The Airwave handsets have a five-year manufacturer's guarantee. We will address the responsible recovery of the handsets once the guarantee period has run out, starting from 2008.
Producer responsibility is an increasingly important issue within the European Union and we are affected by two directives. The first obliges us to gather accurate data on the packaging we use and evidence that our recovery and recycling targets have been met. This is carried out on our behalf by the Valpak Compliance Scheme. The second – the European Commission Directive on Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) – obliges operators and retailers to provide ways to recover and recycle electrical and electronic equipment. By participating in a takeback scheme we should meet our collection obligations under the current draft regulations.
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| Supply chain | Energy | Waste and recycling | Mobile handsets and equipment | Pollution | Consulting with communities | Greener ways to work | Certification |
Greenhouse gases and pollution
We aim to reduce emissions of the greenhouse gases associated with our consumption of energy, in line with UK Government commitments on global warming. We will also reduce our use of other materials such as refrigerant gases, which may further contribute to global warming and also to ozone depletion. We have a target to reduce refrigerants and HCFC gases by 10 per cent per unit of total volume by March 2008. A programme to replace R22 coolants in air conditioning with HFC R407c is under way in the UK. We are also considering the feasibility of replacing air conditioning altogether with forced air systems, as our long-term goal is to significantly reduce the amount of stored refrigerants relative to the number of active cell sites.
Diesel tanks at our fixed installations store large quantities of fuel and our goal is for 100 per cent to be secondary protected against spills and leakage by March 2005. This has already been achieved throughout the Group, except on the Isle of Man where we aim to secure 12 installations before March 2005.
There were no significant spills of chemicals, oils or fuels in our operations during 2003/04 and there were no environmental fines or enforcement actions against any of the operating companies.
Consulting with communities
The environmental impact of our network – visually and in terms of noise and landscaping – continues to cause some concerns, which we try to handle through early consultation with local authorities and communities. Our dedicated O2 UK response team recorded 999 queries on new sites or site objections during the year, see the chart below.
For more information about our strategy for the siting of mobile communication masts, please see the health section of this report.
An environmental checklist helps minimise the impact of our mast siting and base station building programme on local communities, for example where schools or places of natural beauty are concerned. We work to find alternative sitings or to mitigate the impacts when issues of biodiversity or visual impact occur.
To reduce our impact, we have a policy to share masts with other operators where feasible. Currently we operate a total of 19,581 base stations.
Greener ways to work
Another way we can improve our performance is to reduce the amount of travelling by our employees. This cuts fuel use and emissions and is safer. As planned, during 2003/04 we tested various green travel options for our employees in the UK and in Ireland.
A travel survey by external consultants was also undertaken to establish existing travel patterns to and from O2 offices. As a result we are now implementing car sharing for employees across our UK sites. This supplements the online, inter-company car-share scheme run by Leeds County Council, in which 134 of our employees participate. During the year we also increased the frequency of company buses between our Slough buildings to cut the use of cars and taxis.
We are committed to using more audio, video and web conferencing to reduce road mileage. Leading by example, our environmental forum to be held in September 2004 will be conducted entirely through video link.
External certification and verification
Our environmental management systems are reviewed internally and externally. The international environmental management standard ISO 14001:1996 is now being integrated into most parts of our business. Operations in the UK have been externally verified to ISO 14001 for four years and mmO2 Group headquarters achieved certification during 2003. All other businesses in the Group are on track to achieve certification by December 2004, in line with our stated Group-wide target. Our environmental impact is also subject to external audits as part of our insurance programme.
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| Supply chain | Energy | Waste and recycling | Mobile handsets and equipment | Pollution | Consulting with communities | Greener ways to work | Certification |
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| LOOKING INTO AIRWAVE |
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| Police Forces in England. Scotland and Wales and other emergency services are now using our secure system > |
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| Are we doing enough to make sure our suppliers behave ethically? |
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| Proportion of participants in the asthma trial who said they were satisfied with being able to manage their asthma symptoms by using the Xda by O2 for monitoring. |
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