Suppliers

Advocating good practice in our supply chain

We work closely with our main suppliers to understand how they are managing their environmental impacts and to encourage them to constantly improve the management of their environmental impacts. 

Our key suppliers are expected to comply with all relevant local and national environmental regulations and we work with them to help minimise the environmental effects of their businesses.

We also require key suppliers to relay the principles of our environmental and ethical procurement policy through their own supply chains.

We benchmark suppliers against the ISO 14001 standard and have developed a series of requirements for our major suppliers.

We use a self-assessment questionnaire and follow-up auditing to check they are complying with our policies. During the year, we sent eight questionnaires to major suppliers and conducted eight audits of suppliers involved in the supply and support of O2-branded products across the O2 Group.

Industry co-operation

In 2006 we continued to work closely with some key suppliers, including Nokia and Ericsson, to help us reduce long-term energy consumption in our networks.

This can be achieved, for example, by using switching devices that automatically shut down when not in use.

Through this collaboration we have also developed a set of specific environmental requirements for our key suppliers.

During 2007 we will conduct tests in the UK to assess whether new energy-efficient network equipment is delivering the stated efficiencies.

As energy prices go up, we will continue to assess the viability and economics of upgrading to the latest network equipment.

We also worked closely with our main network equipment and mobile handset supplier, to encourage the development of environmentally friendly handset devices. We are particularly keen to specify equipment that includes automatic switch-off capabilities, chargers and handsets that can be recycled easily, and products that need less packaging and consume less energy.

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