Color unified communications solutions green,
Sprint said. The carrier reports that more companies are finding that UC tools can serve customers better and faster, facilitate more productive interactions among employees and business partners, and ultimately save money. It lets businesses “go green” by equipping employees with a complete set of solutions to work from home or from anywhere without having to return to offices, thereby reducing pollution. Going green in this fashion also ensures business continuity.
Sprint (
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In May, Sprint announced how it is collaborating with Cisco (
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Sprint is walking the walk on going green. The Mobile Integration Solution is built with tools developed, provided by, and used by the carrier. In 2005, Sprint began helping certain employee groups to work nearly anywhere. In 2008, it started deploying UC internally, which accelerated mobile work force enablement by eliminating desk phones and tying voice capabilities to laptops via VoIP with unified voicemail.
As a result, Sprint has reduced office space. Employees can eliminate or reduce their commute, both leading to decreased carbon emissions. Specifically:
- Since 2005, Sprint has vacated 1 million square feet of office space because of its mobile workforce initiative. Looking only at electrical costs and average usage per square foot, Sprint has saved approximately $2.65 million and eliminated more than 62 million kilowatt hours, equating to more than 44,500 metric tons of carbon dioxide. This is equivalent to the carbon emissions from the electricity used in almost 6,200 homes in one year
- Approximately 4,000 Sprint employees are now designated as mobile workers. These individuals no longer must travel to an office but can work at home or another location convenient for them, which means a reduction in commuting. Using national averages and assuming these employees don’t drive to work at least two days per week, approximately 12 million miles of commuting have been eliminated along with 5,590 metric tons of carbon dioxide. This is equivalent to the carbon emissions from more than 630,000 gallons of gas consumed.
- Because of its UC deployment, Sprint is replacing 489 PBXs across the country. It conducted a study to calculate the environmental savings and determined that the replaced PBXs used approximately 13.5 million kWh of power. The replacement system uses only 237,600 kWh: a 98 percent annual reduction in power consumed. This is a savings of approximately $1 million per year and 10,300 metric tons of carbon dioxide, which is equivalent to greenhouse gas emissions from almost 1,900 passenger vehicles for a year
Sprint recently announced
new environmental initiatives, including becoming the first U.S. wireless carrier to establish a set of environmental design criteria for future devices and a commitment to reduce paper usage by 30 percent during the next five years. Sprint also has an aggressive industry-first goal of reaching a
90 percent phone collection rate for reuse/recycling, compared with annual wireless device sales, by 2017. Since 2001, Sprint wireless recycling programs have diverted nearly 18 million cell phones from landfills for reuse or recycling. Wireless recycling is one of
Sprint’s key environmental priorities.
“As a leader among telecommunications companies in environmentally responsible initiatives, Sprint is fully engaged in ensuring that it does its part to incorporate sustainability into every part of its business, from wireless recycling to renewable energy in its networks,” said Paget Alves (
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Edited by
Amy Tierney
