Protecting the Environment

Environmental stewardship is deeply ingrained in our heritage. It manifests itself in our corporate commitment to be a respectful, responsible and positive influence.

A wetlands restoration project at our Corporate Operations Center in New Jersey saw the return of several rare native species.

Chuck Graff (left) and Todd Talbot in Verizon’s electronic equipment test facilities in Baltimore, Maryland.

Verizon teams from around the country can now meet face-to-face — with no airport security delays and zero jet-engine emissions.

Chuck Graff and Todd Talbot didn’t set out to change the world. The two engineers in our Network Operations group just wanted to make Verizon’s telecommunications equipment more energy efficient and lower the company’s energy costs.

The issue was heat. Our telecommunications equipment generates a lot of it, and nearly $1 billion a year — about 50 percent of our total energy costs — goes toward cooling that equipment.

Rather than wait for an international group to come up with standards, Graff and Talbot took it upon themselves to start from scratch and write energy-consumption standards and a measurement process for new telecommunications-related equipment — something that had never been done before in our industry anywhere in the world.

Our new standards — much like the standardized Energy Star efficiency levels set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for household appliances — went into effect on January 1, 2009.

As a result, much of the new network equipment purchased by Verizon is now 20 percent more energy efficient. That significantly reduces greenhouse gas emissions and saves millions of dollars in energy costs.

“Being green is more than a corporate initiative,” Graff said. “It was too important in terms of the environment and the cost not to do it.”

Graff and Talbot helped create a ripple effect that will benefit generations to come. And, as vendors build equipment to meet our new standards, the greater environmental impact will be felt when other communications companies purchase the energy-efficient equipment as well.

It’s Our Responsibility

Environmental stewardship is deeply ingrained in our heritage. It manifests itself in our corporate commitment to be a respectful, responsible and positive influence on the environment in which we operate — especially because our impact on the environment is significant.

Verizon has the second-largest private fleet of vehicles in the United States, which uses 59 million gallons of gasoline and diesel fuel annually. We occupy more than 30,000 facilities around the world, and we consume more than 9 billion kilowatt hours of electricity.

Every part of Verizon is engaged in the effort to reduce our environmental impact and become more efficient — from installing energy-management software for employees’ PCs, to finding ways to reduce the time our vehicles are left idling. The savings on the vehicle idling initiative reached 1 million gallons of fuel in 2008. The reduction in carbon emissions from this program is equivalent to removing 1,600 cars from the highway.

Verizon Broadband Helps You Be Green, Too

Recent studies have shown how broadband usage and Information Communications Technology (ICT) can have a huge environmental impact by reducing energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.

A November 2008 report by GeSI, the Global e-Sustainability Initiative, estimates that ICT can reduce emissions in the U.S. by up to 22 percent by 2020 through environmentally friendly practices such as smart logistics, smart buildings, a smart power grid and reducing travel through videoconferencing and telework.

A 2007 American Consumer Institute (ACI) study found major reductions are possible over 10 years:

• Telecommuting reduces office space and car commutes, saving 588 million tons of emissions;
• Widespread teleconferencing could eliminate one-tenth of all flights, saving 200 million tons;
• E-commerce will reduce warehousing and long- distance shipping, saving 206 million tons; and

The GeSI and ACI studies show how widespread adoption of high-speed Internet service could cut up to 36 percent of U.S. oil imports each year and eliminate a billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions in 10 years.