Responsibility Blog

[#1]

Each day I’m inspired to see the results of dedicated employees making a difference.  And today, on Earth Day, we collectively celebrate and pledge anew to incorporate sustainability into our business and our lives.  Our diverse employees deserve diverse opportunities for involvement…here are just a few ways we are celebrating Earth Day at Verizon this year.

Environmental volunteerism:  Verizon is supporting over 20 separate ‘green’ events around the country this month.  Employees are participating in force removing litter, weeding gardens, cleaning parks and planting trees.  On an annual basis, employees volunteer around 18,000 hours on environmental efforts and today we are recognizing 10 of those employees with our second annual environmental excellence award.

Education:  Today we invited over 70 external partners to participate in our Green Expos focused on educating employees about all of the ‘green’ initiatives in progress around the company.  From new products and services, to energy saving programs and fleet innovations, our employees will learn the latest news and be invited to participate in hands-on demonstrations and receive promotional materials.

Engagement:  Last year, we launched the Verizon Green Team aimed at involving interested employees in our sustainability program.  Since then nearly 3,000 employees from 41 states and 18 countries have joined the team and shared their ideas and support.  Amazingly, on average 16 employees join the Green Team each day.  One large, joint effort of the entire team is recycling.  In 2010, employees collected over 170K pounds of electronics for recycling and our 2011 goal is 350K pounds.  To help meet this goal, we have 13 separate collection events going on around the country this week.

We like to say “Every day is Earth Day at Verizon” but today is a chance to also say Thank You to every employee who makes that statement true day in and day out the whole year through!

Happy Earth Day!

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Having read about "green" projects and Verizon's sustainability claim on the website and here on this blog, I wonder whether Verizon might be interested in engaging in a unique event on sustainable practice. This summer, I will bring 25 Europeans and the same number of North Americans, all of them bike commuters or transportational bicycle riders, to do a grand tour across the United States -- more than 5,000 kilometers in four weeks with lots of encounters with folks along our route. The ride will be a practitioners' demonstration on the potential of green personal mobility. We are riding the world's most efficient touring bicycles enabling us to cover average daily legs of 200 kilometers. This has never happened in the Western Hemisphere and will be a very unique sight to see. We're expecting a lot of media attention wherever we will pass. All information is here: www.rolloveramerica.eu Verizon could help a lot to spread our message by supporting the tour with communications, voice and data, online tracking and internet sharing. Maybe this is entirely inappropriate in this section -- if so, I would much appreciate being directed to the proper contact. Josef Janning Tour Captain Roll over America

[#3]

Josef,

Thanks for the information about Roll Over America. It sounds like a terrific initiative and will be happy to let our employees know about this through our internal publication Vz Green Insider. That way our employees will have the link you provide above and become engaged as they are able.

We get many requests for sponsorships of really worthwhile events and unfortunately can’t support them all financially. Activating our employees, though, will give you more folks across the country who are aware of the work you are doing.

Thanks again,

Jim