2Sustain

Earlier this month, Sprint announced it is joining the World Wildlife Fund’s (WWF) Climate Savers program.

As one of only 28 companies in the Climate Savers program, Sprint joins IBM, The Coca-Cola Company and Johnson & Johnson and others that have agreed to take aggressive measures to scale up climate protection efforts.

Even among these sustainability leaders, however, Sprint’s commitment is particularly noteworthy. It is now one of only two companies in the Climate Savers program to address all scopes of GHG emissions through the WWF agreement. Sprint is the only US company to do so, and it joins KPN, a Dutch telecommunications company, as the only other partner in the Climate Savers program to commit to such a multifaceted GHG emissions reduction strategy for its own operations, suppliers and consumers.

Sprint’s commitments include: (more…)

In March of 2010, AT&T launched an initiative to slim down its accessory packaging, and since then, the company has succeeded in eliminating more than 500 tons of paper and plastic used for packaging device chargers, cases, batteries and data cables.

Now, AT&T is ratcheting up its commitment to sustainable packaging one more notch. Last week, AT&T announced that it will become the first US telecom company to use new plant-based plastic in its accessory packaging.

The new plastic is composed of up to 30 percent plant-based materials sourced from natural sugarcane. According to AT&T, the sugarcane used is a rapidly renewable agricultural crop and replaces nearly a third of the fossil fuels traditionally used in this particular packaging. (more…)

Sprint, the third-largest wireless provider in the US, has finished at the top of the class in ForestEthics’ 2011 Green Grades Report Card.

In its fifth annual report card, ForestEthics gave Sprint the highest score, an “A,” in recognition of the company’s work to reduce the impact that its paper consumption has on the world’s forests.

This year, ForestEthics rated 12 large companies in the telecommunications, insurance and credit card sectors.  What’s the common denominator among these three sectors?  They all are noted for their heavy consumption of paper, especially those direct marketing offers that end up in our mailboxes.

Sprint received the highest grade for the following reasons: (more…)

Yesterday, Verizon Communications released its 2008/09 Sustainability Report, titled “Doing the Work.” The new report outlines Verizon’s accomplishments and challenges regarding the company’s five strategic CSR priorities: ethics and governance, service and innovation, empowering employees, protecting the environment, and partnering with communities.

The 56-page report is very user friendly, particularly the section called “Holding Ourselves Accountable,” where the company lays out its five priorities and lists “Our Focus,” “What We Said We’d Do,” “What We Did,” and “What We’ll Do Next.” For instance, on the topic of protecting the environment, Verizon says it is focused on minimizing the impact of its operations by conserving energy, recycling, and finding solutions to environmental challenges. Last year, the company said it would promote research on how broadband can help minimize environmental impact, and so it funded a study that found that information communications technology (ICT) can reduce carbon emissions up to 22% by 2020 and reduce dependence on foreign oil by 36%. In the future, Verizon plans to conduct “smart building” technology trial to gauge internal savings and potential for new product lines.

(more…)