Environmental Sustainability Results

We will lead our industry by minimizing the environmental impact of our operations and by facilitating the transition to a low-carbon, sustainable economy.

Reducing Our Impact on the Environment

In 2010, we developed a new metric that shows the carbon emissions that result from moving a terabyte of information across our networks. Efficiency is improved by reducing the absolute amount of energy and by moving more information with the same unit of energy. In this way, we can adequately assess how we are becoming more energy efficient, even as our business expands.

In 2010, Verizon improved carbon efficiency by more than 15% versus 2009.

Carbon Intensity Metric Results

We intend to report our carbon-intensity efficiency results every year in addition to energy usage and CO2 emissions.

Alternative Fuel Fleet

Verizon added more than 1,600 alternative-fuel vehicles to its fleet in 2010, such as this hybrid pickup, and converted 370 vehicles to use biofuels. The purchases and conversions increased the number of alternative-fuel vehicles in our fleet to approximately 5%. Our goal is to increase the percentage of these vehicles in the fleet to 15% by 2015.

2010 CO2 Emissions Profile

Making Our Buildings Greener

• In 2010, Verizon Wireless was accepted into the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Volume Program. Thirty-two Verizon Wireless stores have earned LEED certification, which indicates that a building was designed and built to ensure energy savings, water efficiency, CO2 emissions reduction, improved indoor environmental quality and effective stewardship of resources.

• Verizon Wireless also received the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Energy Star® certification for upgrading 85 of its retail stores, earning the designation as an EPA Energy Star Partner.

• Verizon tested a new system for regulating the temperature in three data centers during 2010. Results from the trials suggest the new design can reduce energy consumption from 5% to 9%. We plan to expand the new system to 23 additional data centers in 2011, which projects to a savings of approximately 42 million kilowatt hours at full implementation.

• In 2010 we conducted trials of four different “smart” building systems at 16 Verizon locations. The result was a 26.7 million kilowatt hour reduction in energy usage and a savings of $2.1 million, projected annually. The “smart” building program will expand to a total of 250 buildings in 2011.

Greener Facilities and Operations

• To increase our suppliers’ focus on sustainability, we developed a “Sustainability Scorecard” to help raise the awareness of the environmental impact of the wireless products (devices and accessories) we are offering our customers.

• Changing the default printer settings at Verizon offices across the country to encourage double-sided, black-and-white printing reduced the number of printed pages by 10.3 million and saved more than $783,000.

• A toner cartridge recycling program conducted at five locations resulted in the recycling of more than 5,300 cartridges which equates to nearly 24.5 tons of CO2 emissions saved.

• Replacing Styrofoam cups and containers with paper and reusable products in offices in New Jersey, upstate New York and the West eliminated nearly 2.4 million pieces of Styrofoam.