Verizon is investing $100 million in green energy to install solar panels and fuel cells at 19 Verizon buildings around the country as part of our commitment to cut carbon intensity in half by 2020.

The Verizon Wireless retail store in Toms River, N.J., place first among retails stores and third overall in the EPA’s 2012 Energy Star National Building Competition. Billed as “The Battle of the Buildings,” more than 3,000 schools, businesses, and government facilities across the country competed to see which could reduce its energy use the most in a year.

To mark Earth Day, we're launching two initiatives to help reduce our impact on the environment: our new ECO Specs label will list five key environmental factors of our wireless devices, and we'll help plant a tree for with the purchase of selected new wireless phone via our second annual Plant-a-Tree promotion, which runs through April 28.

In honor of the more than 13,600 Verizon employees who supported Earth Hour across 37 countries, Verizon is planting 6,000 trees, including 1,000 in Pillaiarkuppam Village in Puducherry, India, where American Forests is working to reforest an ecosystem along the Gingee River.

Chief Sustainability Officer James Gowen reports that Verizon Wireless a 2013 ENERGY STAR® Partner of the Year for our ongoing work to wring every possible kilowatt out of our retail store operations. We have worked closely with the EPA for more than six years, resulting in ENERGY STAR certification for all 116 of our eligible stores, and we’ve improved overall energy efficiency by 5.2 percent.

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Verizon’s Chief Sustainability Officer Jim Gowen blogs about our participation in Earth Hour and five new environmental goals ranging from wireless device recycling targets to expanded public reporting of our carbon footprint.

Our Chief Sustainability Officer James Gowen blogs about a simple idea that has a big impact: introducing a fleet of buses to take our field techs from job to job in New York City.

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Blogger James Gowen discusses the recently released ranking of the top five traffic congested areas in the United States and examines one humble but powerful alternative: Telecommuting.

Verizon will host a student intern from the Environmental Defense Fund's Climate Corps fellowship program. The Climate Corps Fellow will research our energy use patterns and help plan energy saving strategies. EDF stats show that on average, each company assisted by the EDF Climate Corps has found $1 million in energy savings.  This is the third consecutive year Verizon has participated in the program, and we look forward to collaborating with these bright sustainability innovators.

A new study concludes that broad use new high-tech solutions can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 16.5 percent by 2020 and help grow the world’s economies. The new GeSI SMARTer2020 report says that the broad use of smart grids, buildings and transport systems enhanced by information communications technology could yield $1.9 trillion in savings for consumers and businesses and create 29.5 million jobs globally.

At a Verizon Recycling Rally today West Chester, Pennsylvania, we surpassed our goal of collecting 1 million pounds of e-waste -- and we're aiming to collecting another million pounds by 2015.

On the 20th anniversary year of the EPA's Energy Star program, Verizon's Chief Sustainability Officer James Gowen blogs on our commitment to Energy Star and our new goal of earning Energy Star certification for 100 percent of eligible Verizon Wireless retail stores at least once.

The Verizon Wireless Trade-In Program has collected more than 1 million phones in less than a year, keeping the equivalent of 140 tons of e-waste out of landfills and 436 tons of carbon dioxide out of the environment. To mark the occasion, Verizon will sponsor the planting of 1,000 trees in Northern California’s Klamath National Forest.

From TVs to toasters, employees and community members found a home for hard-to-recycle items, at our latest Recycling Rally Days in Ashburn, Va., and Basking Ridge, N.J.

So far this year, and our total recycling efforts have collected more than 310,000 lbs. of material -- the equivalent of 25 charter buses kept out of landfills. And we're on our way to collect more than 1 million lbs. this year.

Our newest “eco-phone,” the Samsung Intensity III, features a shell made of 80% recycled plastics, an energy efficient charger, and comes with an eco-calculator app. If you’re looking to minimize every aspect of your carbon footprint, this may be the phone for you.

An interesting take on a study of the energy-saving possibilities of household broadband use asks the question: "Will we all become dehumanized zombies?"

Increased use of simple and convenient online activities like teleworking and online shopping can reduce carbon emissions by millions of metric tons and deliver significant energy savings, according to a new report by the Global e-Sustainability Initiative.

The study looks at eight consumer activities enabled by the development of broadband technology.

Our Earth Day activities have been a big success. We’ve held 20 volunteer events around the country so far, and as a result of our “Buy a Phone, Plant a Tree” promotion, nearly 7,000 trees will be planted -- and there’s still time to join in.

As a company committed to energy conservation, we know that every watt conserved is an important step in the right direction. In that spirit, I'm happy to tell you that our participation in Earth Hour will be our largest to date, spanning 17 countries and more than 2,100 employees who have volunteered to participate at home.

50% off!

It sounds great when you’re standing online waiting to pay. It sounded good to us, too.

Earlier this week we announced our goal to cut in half our carbon intensity – the amount of energy needed to move data across Verizon’s networks -- by 2020. We’re using our 2009 carbon intensity level as the benchmark and the starting point for our goal.

We've been attacking the problem of vehicle emissions in many different ways, from adding alternative-fuel vehicles to our fleet, to minimizing the time vehicles spend idling, down to reducing the amount of equipment we haul around in our vans to lower weight and save gas. One exciting development announced today is a collaboration with VIA Motors to develop and test extended range electric pick-up trucks and vans in Verizon's fleet.

E-Waste! It's a dirty word, all right. Recycling of cans and plastic bottles is mandatory in many cities and towns across the country. Quite frankly, curbside pick-up makes it very convenient in towns like mine and many others.

That's not the case with electronic waste. Consumers and businesses discarded some 2.25 million tons of e-waste in 2007, according to EPA, with the majority of it disposed of primarily in landfills where the precious metals cannot be recovered and hazardous substances can leach into the ground and contaminate soil and water.

Velcro is great! You can even use it to watch TV. Well, not quite yet, but one day your set-top box will be so small and light that you’ll be able to Velcro it to the back of your TV.

In our labs in Waltham, Mass., we’re busy working with partners to develop the future of TV.

Verizon has completed its largest solar energy project to date. The location? Two Central Offices on Long Island, N.Y. The first, at 35 Prospect Avenue in Port Washington, is a 108-solar panel installation on the roof, churning out 25 kilowatts of power. The second, at 741 Zeckendorf Boulevard in Garden City, is a 221-solar panel system producing 50 kilowatts of power.

Today we launch our fourth green Verizon Wireless mobile device, the Samsung Illusion. For several years now we’ve been encouraging our suppliers to focus on sustainability, and we’ve developed a “Sustainability Scorecard” for them — a comprehensive checklist of green qualities that we’d like to see in our products. And Samsung delivered a terrific phone.

I recently spoke with the National League of Cities about how we help our communities around the country. Increasingly, we think that we can help communities large and small through what we do best: using our networks to connect people and devices.

For communities on a large scale, we can use our networks to enable intelligent remote automation. That’s a fancy way of saying that if we use our technology to network machines and information, we can save time, lower energy costs and give consumers more control over their lives.

Some of this is already happening behind the scenes, but that’s just the beginning.

A new report shows more companies are adding Chief Sustainability Officers to their corporate suites. 



Since forming the sustainability team here at Verizon, we’ve focused on helping the environment in many different ways. Today we’re celebrating perhaps our proudest accomplishment – the Verizon Green Team is turning 5,000. By that, we of course mean it now has 5,000 members. These members, all Verizon employees, are located in 20 countries and in 48 U.S. states – and it took less than two years to reach that number. 

When it comes to sustainability, one of Verizon’s challenges is going green while growing our business. Take the cloud, for example – one of the biggest developments in the telecommunications world today. On the business side, service providers such as Verizon are delivering “everything as a service” to its business customers. On the consumer side, customers are storing their digital media – from music to videos to high-def movies – in “the cloud”, so they can access it anywhere on any device.

Since 2004, we have made much progress in the area of sustainability. Protecting the environment has clearly emerged as a priority for Verizon.

We are actively engaged in finding new ways to use broadband and mobile technologies to solve environmental challenges.