Vodafone makes progress on green issues

July 2, 2015

According to Vodafone’s recently released corporate responsibility report, the company has made significant progress in becoming greener and more environmentally responsible, and has made limiting its contribution to climate change a priority.

According to the report, Vodafone’s total carbon dioxide emissions fell by 12 per cent during the 2006/07 financial year. Alongside this, the energy efficiency of new network equipment increased by 25 per cent.

Around 80 per cent of Vodafone’s CO2 emissions from energy use are related to the running of its network.

In the 2006/07 financial year, total CO2 output was 1.23 million tonnes and 0.99 million tonnes of this was from running the network.

Vodafone aims to reduce the CO2 emissions per unit of transmitted data by 40 per cent between 2005 and 2011.

The company also increased its use of renewable energy by 28 per cent in the past year and has increased the number of handsets collected for re-use or recycling by 59 per cent. It total, 97 per cent of network equipment waste was recycled.

This has helped Vodafone to comply with the European WEEE – waste electrical and electronic equipment – directive which comes into force on 1 July. This requires producers of new technology equipment to recycle or safely dispose of products once they are no longer in use.

Vodafone has also replaced energy intensive air conditioning at base stations with more efficient free cooling, and identified sites where energy usage could be further reduced.

In line with its increased focus on green issues, Vodafone has created a global energy management team with responsibility for implementing targets in energy use.