AT&T--Rethinking What's Possible for the Environment

AT&T™ is the world’s largest communications holding company with revenues of $124 billion in 2010.  We’ve all heard their slogan, “Rethink Possible.  Connecting you to your world, everywhere you live and work.”  AT&T is everywhere, indeed—225 countries and employs 256,000 people worldwide.  AT&T takes its own slogan to heart when it comes to the environment. 

I’m an advocate for finding inspiration from what others are doing and replicating ideas that have proven to be successful.  That’s why I decided to do some investigating into what the world of big business is doing to save energy and adopt sustainable business practices.  Where better to start looking than at a Fortune 500 company?  AT&T is ranked 11 among America’s largest corporations.

AT&T is actively working across its business units and organization to implement strong and effective measures to lower its carbon footprint and facilitate recycling and waste reduction of its products.   Obviously, when a company the size of AT&T tackles a goal, it can bring a lot of resources to the effort.  For example, AT&T plans to invest $565 million in alternate fuel vehicles for its fleet by 2018.  The company is tracking its progress and reporting on eleven areas of focus.

Here are just a few specific examples, taken from AT&T’s website section on Environmental Sustainability:

“Print 360--We have a relationship with Xerox Corp. to help us complete a Print 360 review of the printing devices in our office buildings. As part of this effort to consolidate and replace this equipment, we removed more than 19,000 devices from nearly 3,000 AT&T locations. Xerox estimates this effort reduced our annual printer-associated energy use by 38 percent and our affiliated GHG emissions by 32 percent per year.

AFVs--By January 2012, AT&T had deployed more than 5,000 AFVs, including more than 3,400 CNG vehicles and more than 1,600 hybrid electric vehicles. AT&T has also deployed two all-electric vehicles (AEVs)….The use of compressed natural gas (CNG) vehicles in our corporate vehicle fleet helped the company avoid the purchase of more than one million gallons of traditional petroleum fuel in 2010.

Paperless billing--We actively encourage our customers to use paperless billing. They can sign up for this paperless billing service through Web sites. In 2010, roughly 2.5 million additional customers opted to receive only an electronic bill, bringing the total number of customers going paperless to about 14.4 million by the end of 2010. Across our company, we estimate paperless billing saved more than 55.6 million sheets of paper per month, totaling more than 667 million sheets of paper saved in 2010. Our goal continues to be to grow the number of customers using this service.”

AT&T‘s website is replete with lots of information on what it has accomplished in recent years and the impacts on reducing energy consumption, waste, and environmental savings.  Be sure to examine the eleven focus areas for specific strategies that are reaping results.  These are excellent examples to build your own business case for walking in the footsteps of giants.  Alexander Graham Bell would be proud.