BRT Sustainability Report: Create, Grow, Sustain: Celebrating Success

At AT&T, we’re all about using communications technology to improve people’s lives and help businesses — including our own — operate more sustainably. We connect millions of people every day, making everything more immediate, seamless and efficient.

And as we do these things, we also work hard to find new ways to reduce the energy, fuel and resources we use. Here’s how we’re helping create a more sustainable world:

• Responsible Product Stewardship: We recently expanded our eco-rating system for devices, so consumers can learn more about the environmental impact of their smartphones and tablets. And we’re committed to minimizing our impact throughout the life cycles of our products. For example, in 2012, we recycled 1.17 million pounds of cell phone batteries and accessories and collected about 3.1 million cell phones for reuse and recycling. 
• Alternative-Fuel Vehicles: Last year, we reached the halfway point of our commitment to invest up to $565 million to deploy about 15,000 alternative-fuel vehicles over the course of 10 years. Already, we’ve put more than 8,900 natural gas, hybrid and all-electric vehicles on the road, saving 7.7 million gallons of gasoline over the last four years. 
• Water Management: We teamed up with Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) to find new ways to conserve water in our operations, developing a set of tools that generated water savings of up to 40 percent. These free tools can help other companies save water, so we’re working with EDF to promote their use in water-stressed areas. If they’re adopted by other U.S. companies, they could collectively save 28 billion gallons of water a year. We have also set our own commitment to reduce our water consumption by 150 million gallons annually by 2015.

These kinds of initiatives — in addition to the products, services and next-generation networks we provide — have great potential to create a more sustainable future. But it’s not just about technology. We’re also committed to serving our communities in other ways, such as helping at-risk high school students succeed in school and prepare for careers through our AT&T Aspire program. And we’re very proud that our employees, along with those of three other wireless providers and more than 4 million Americans, have joined our efforts to end texting while driving through the “It Can Wait” movement. 

Innovation means nothing if future generations can’t reap the benefits. That’s why our commitment to sustainability will always be at the center of how we do business at AT&T. 

This letter was authored by AT&T’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Randall Stephenson and originally appeared in the Business Roundtable’s 2014 Sustainability Report. For more information, please view this video.