Results
Acting in an effective and responsible manner
Management of our impact on the environment
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Our commitment
To implement business goals with respect for the rules of ecology and in harmony with the environment: optimization of energy use in the following areas: real estate, infrastructure and network, Data Center, supervision over Orange Polska’s impact on the environment; increase in number of recycled, re-use and refurbished devices. 
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Delivery on our commitments in 2018
Orange Polska has adopted an environmental policy that defines
the company’s key areas of use of natural resources and our
impact on the environment. Appropriate supervision of our
operations is ensured by our Environmental Management System
for mobile telephony services, which is consistent with the ISO
14001 standard. Starting from January 2019, we withdrew
formal certification of our Environmental Management System
according to ISO14001. Nevertheless, all operational activities of
the company are still conducted according to its principles.
These safeguards allow us to:
- oversee the processes which may affect the environment in compliance with legal requirements and other environmental regulations;
- identify our negative impact on the environment;
- account for environmental issues while setting objectives and making decisions as well as carrying out initiatives reducing our impact on the environment;
- monitor the compliance of electromagnetic emissions with the relevant standards;
- attempt to reduce CO2 emissions related to our activity;
- improve our business practices and apply technological solutions to reduce negative environmental impact;
- engage in dialogue with stakeholders and inform them about our environmental protection initiatives;
- raise environmental awareness among our employees and customers;
- cooperate with our suppliers to ensure their compliance with our environmental policy.
All our energy saving initiatives, including some designed by our own employees, have been combined into a single programme, ‘Energy Optimisation’. To date, Orange Polska has launched almost 160 such initiatives, which generated total energy savings of 256 GWh between 2014 and 2018 and will generate savings of 139 GWh annually after all the projects are completed (against 2014 base year - business as usual). It means an overall reduction in carbon dioxide emissions of 171,000 tonnes. Thanks to this programme our electricity consumption decreased by 10% between 2014 and 2018, despite our investments in the new technologies and development of new services. Without it, our electricity consumption would have increased by 10% in that period.
We try to reduce the amount of materials we use in our operations and to reuse them rather than dispose of them. We encourage our customers to recycle old mobile devices: a buyback programme for unwanted mobile phones is one of our key environmental initiatives. It is also possible to drop off old mobile phones and accessories, free of charge, in Orange stores.
Multimedia devices, such as modems and set top-boxes, are leased to customers for the term of their telecommunication service agreements. As a result, products that have not yet come to the end of their life cycles can be reassigned to other Orange Polska customers, avoiding the need to purchase new devices. These products are deemed to be ‘as good as new’ after refurbishment.
In 2018, over 265,721 modems, broadband and CPE devices were refurbished and returned to the market, which is approximately 28% of the total number in circulation in Poland. In addition, Orange Polska refurbished 211,000 units on behalf of Orange France, which is approximately 10% of returned devices in France. We also renewed 14,404 set-top boxes for Orange Senegal. In total, 491,125 devices were refurbished in 2018.
On top of our in-house refurbishment processes, with the help of our external service partner, over 5,600 mobile devices have been refurbished and put back into distribution in Poland, both smartphones and tablets.
The number of handsets collected from customers decreased in 2018. The decrease was a result of lower distribution of new devices, enhanced quality of products, mobile market saturation and elimination of gaps in the returns process. Instead, the Company is developing a comprehensive bonus system for customers returning their old phones.
