Being a responsible business

25 May 2011

Sir Mike Rake, BT chairman, tells us about BT’s broader responsibilities to society and the environment.

I have taken an interest in corporate social responsibility throughout my career. It has also been a central part of BT’s business strategy since the early 1990s. We call it corporate responsibility (or CR for short) and we take our responsibilities very seriously.

In the past, as Chairman of KPMG and of BITC (Business in the Community) I found that companies can better work with their communities and the environment by embedding sustainability into business strategy. This can provide significant business benefits as well as improving the communities and the environment that we work and live in.

We have already made much progress but there is still more to do.

BT’s track record in CR is already impressive and our work has been recognised by a number of leading organisations. We have maintained our gold class ranking in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index and we have kept our ‘Platinum Plus’ status in BiTC’s (Business in the Community) CR Index. We are sector leader in the FTSE4Good ESG ratings and came in joint first place in the Carbon Disclosure Project’s Leadership Index.

…but we always strive to do more

Our CR strategy is led by a Board Committee chaired by me, and the members include representatives from BT businesses, non-executive directors and independent members. One of the most important features of our CR strategy is that we work with a Leadership Panel of external experts, who advise us on how we can lead in sustainability.

We listen to our stakeholders – customers, the public, our people, shareholders – very carefully on what they expect of us as a responsible company, and we make sure we build this into our CR approach.

We believe that it’s vital we grow as a business in a way that benefits our customers and society. We also believe that communications technology can help to tackle social and environmental challenges by addressing critical issues such as privacy, content standards and accessibility.

Putting the environment first

We consider environmental impact in the design and sourcing of our products and we work with industry bodies to raise standards across our global supply chain. This is helping to improve energy efficiency in our consumer product range, including our phones, Home Hub (wireless internet router) and our BT Vision box, which is now 12% more energy efficient than the previous version.

We are constantly aiming to minimise BT’s impact on the environment and feel very proud of our environmental management track record, having set our first carbon reduction target back in 1992.

For example, we’ve reduced the carbon intensity of our global business by 59% compared with our 1997 baseline, and our aim is to reduce this even further, by a total of 80%, by 2020. Last year, taking account of the purchase of zero and low carbon electricity, we reduced our CO₂ emissions by 24,000 tonnes in the UK, a 7% reduction from the previous year and down 60% from 1997.

We are undertaking other carbon reduction activities, to meet our goals. In the UK, we are leading the largest corporate windpower project outside the energy sector.

And we are reducing our waste too. Waste sent to landfill reduced by 69% compared with 2010, and we recycled 81% of our waste globally, meeting our target. We recovered and recycled 55,000 tonnes of redundant copper cables from our UK network last year.

BT’s positive contribution to society

BT’s CR strategy isn’t just about helping the environment. We strive to give more direct help to people too.

Our technology and services have helped telethons and disaster appeals that have raised £34 million through initiatives such as Children in Need, the Disaster Emergency Committee (DEC) appeals for the Pakistan floods, and Comic Relief.

We have invested money, time and in-kind support worth £27.6 million in our community and sustainability programmes, meeting our commitment to invest at least one per cent of group pre-tax profits every year. We believe that by investing in and supporting our communities, we can help to build a more economically sustainable, educated and socially-inclusive society.

We are committed to help tackle the social, economic and technology barriers that prevent people from getting online. We have launched our Get IT Together campaign to help us get at least 100,000 digitally excluded people in the UK online by 2012.

We launched MyDonate earlier this year to help UK charities raise more money online. MyDonate is a free service that enables charities to keep 100% of the donations they receive (excluding bank charges). We worked with a number of leading charities, such as Cancer Research UK, Changing Faces, KidsOut, NSPCC/ChildLine and Women’s Aid, to make sure it meets the needs of charities.

People power

We are proud of our volunteering programme.Last year our people across the globe spent more than 49,000 days volunteering in the community, giving time with an estimated labour value of £13.8m and bringing valuable business expertise to community groups. In addition, this brings community learning into BT.

We have a commitment to tomorrow’s workforce. During the year we ran two programmes to provide apprentice qualifications in job-related skills: customer service and business administration for our advisors and leadership for our managers. A total of 8,100 people successfully completed these qualifications. Our ‘Work Inspiration’ programme provided work placements at BT for 3,500 young people this year and we have committed to providing 4,000 Work Inspiration opportunities this year.

A sustainable commitment to the future

We are doing groundbreaking work to achieve a sustainable future, and we are truly committed to improving our society and environment. Not only is BT providing the framework for a low carbon future, we are also embedding sustainability into our decision-making, to try to ensure far-reaching consequences for our business and the environment. 

Our 2011 Sustainability Review is available online at www.bt.com/betterfuture