The environment

We care about the environment and actively manage our impact on it

How we're minimising our impact

Our purpose is to use the power of communications to make a better world. In the environmental space we aim to achieve this by:

Reducing the impact of our operations, supply chain and customer solution
Helping our customers reduce their own environmental impact

If we expect our customers, suppliers and partners to reduce their impact on the environment, we need to practice what we preach.

With this in mind, as part of BT we’ve set ourselves a new 2030 target for creating less waste, cutting carbon emissions and increasing fuel efficiency. To find out more about these targets and how we’re doing, have a look at our Delivering our Purpose report.

We also have a Safety and Sustainability policy, which you can download on the right. This policy ensures we work safely, protect the wellbeing of others and look after the environment too.

To help our customers reduce their environmental impact, we’ve improved our phone recycling offer.

The scheme has been a great success: since 2011, 447,394 phones have been recycled.

We continue to look to minimise the size of handset packaging. We've been successful in reducing the packaging of our latest mobile broadband devices, with a 27% reduction on our 4GEE WiFi Standard when compared to the previous version.

How we’re getting better

We're:

finding new ways to cut the amount of energy we’re using in our networks and equipment
controlling how much energy we’re using in our offices
using more renewable energy
looking at how much fuel we use in our vehicles
encouraging our drivers to adopt more efficient driving techniques
cutting down on business travel

What we do

Carbon Reduction

Operating a business of our size, with a network that spans the UK, uses a significant amount of energy. This energy creates carbon dioxide (CO2), contributing to climate change – something we're committed to minimising.

We’re devoted to reducing our carbon emissions and continuing the reductions already achieved.

As part of BT we will reduce our carbon emissions by 87% by 2030, on a path to help limit global warming to 1.5°C by the end of the century.

As part of the transition to a low carbon business model, we had previously set a target in 2008 of an 80% reduction of our carbon emissions by 2020.

After reaching this target four years ahead of schedule, we’ve set a new 2030 target, approved by the Science-Based Targets Initiative, which is aligned with the most ambitious aim of the COP21 Paris Agreement. This aim seeks to limit global warming to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursue efforts to limit it even further to 1.5°C by the end of the century.

To meet this ambitious goal, we will be targeting innovative ways to further reduce our dependency on fossil fuels, for example through the adoption of low carbon vehicles in our fleet and reducing the carbon intensity of buildings.

Waste and Recycling
Since 2015 all the EE contact centres and offices have not sent any waste to landfill. This means our focus is now to reduce the amount of material we waste, irrespective of the fact it might be recycled or similar.

We've set all our printers to two-sided printing - a simple but very effective change - and actively manage our paper distribution. We encourage our suppliers to take back their packaging and re-use it where possible

We also encourage our employees to recycle and have converted our on-site facilities to a single-stream process, which enables staff to recycle the majority of their waste in one place

We're also happy to play our part in the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive, and the Batteries Directive, both of which are UK law. We help our customers dispose of old phones, laptops, other electronic accessories and household batteries. Customers simply bring these items to our stores and we either send them to be recycled or dispose of them safely ourselves. We also pay customers for old devices through our phone recycling scheme. All electrical items and batteries we sell must now be marked with the wheelie bin symbol. This reminds customers to dispose of them separately from their usual household waste. The battery producer registration numbers for EE and BT are:

EE – BPRN02671

BT – BPRN00390

In addition, we comply with the Single Use Carrier Bag Charge (Regulations) 2010 for our Welsh stores. Between April 2017 and March 2018, we sold 1,291 carrier bags in these stores, raising £64.55. Staff voted for this money to go to the environmental charity WWF Cymru.

Our supply chain

We’re committed to working with responsible suppliers, and we strive to go beyond the basics.

More about our supply chain

Our communities

The communities where we operate are supported by our people and our business.

The environment

How we’re getting better

Building a responsible business