Let’s Keep the Planet Blue

Climate change is not taking a break in the pandemic. On the contrary: those who were still rejoicing about the short-term decline in greenhouse gas emissions in mid-2020 have now been disappointed. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), global emissions at the end of 2020 were higher than in 2019. Sobering news that shows that the so often called for abandonment of CO2-intensive mobility or even the downsizing of consumption and production alone cannot save the climate. It is not enough! We need collective initiatives against climate change - such as those being tackled by politics and business on Earth Day. Above all, these initiatives must be aimed at accelerating digitisation. Because in digitisation lies one of the greatest levers for climate protection. According to @Bitkom, Germany can already reach half of its climate targets by 2030 and make our planet more liveable again - just by significantly increasing digitisation. This would be in line with the ambition of today's Earth Day: ?Restore Our Earth?." 

Advancing climate protection together  

Global warming is throwing our planet out of balance. It has the potential to destroy life as we know it and as we want it to be for our children and grandchildren. Around Earth Day, millions of people join together to draw attention to this. Several climate summits are taking place this week. Last but not least, US President Joe Biden is using Earth Day as an opportunity to resume climate protection talks with politicians from 17 countries, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. With one goal: to fight global warming together.  

Only together will we succeed in effectively combating climate change. This is an experience that I also have in my company. At Telefónica Deutschland / O2, we have been committed to protecting the environment and climate for over 15 years. Initially with individual activities by a smaller number of employees, then in an increasingly structured way with more projects and people. Since 2016 at the latest, we have been pursuing our goals systematically, managed via our Responsible Business Plan and together with colleagues from all areas of the company. We have thus achieved and even exceeded our sustainability goals for 2020. We have set ourselves ambitious goals for the coming years. By 2025 at the latest, we want to be climate neutral and significantly expand our range of sustainable products and services https://bit.ly/3sHCglJ .  

We are using Earth Day as an opportunity to place this sustainable offer under the guiding principle "Let's Keep the Planet Blue". For the first time, customers will have the opportunity to sell their used mobile phones to O2 https://bit.ly/3eqCSH6. In this way, we are creating an incentive to bring functioning devices back onto the market instead of leaving 200 million old devices lying in Germany's drawers. Together with our customers, we can thus conserve resources, avoid waste and reduce CO2 emissions caused by the production of new devices. And if an old device is no longer functional, customers can give it free of charge to our mobile phone recycling programme for the benefit of @NABU environmental projects, through which we collected around 100,000 old devices in 2020 alone. 

 We democratise access to digitalisation and climate protection 

The remarketing of used digital devices is one of many important measures to make digitisation resource-friendly. And that is important. Because the potential of digitisation to restore the world's ecosystem is enormous. We need to harness it without at the same time putting too much strain on the climate elsewhere. 

Earth Day moves people, politicians and companies. They are all working together to find a way to tackle melting ice, fires, heatwaves and flooding as a result of global warming. Our contribution as a company to this community is stable, secure and affordable access to the digital infrastructure we need in the climate fight. We are democratising access to a sustainable, digital future to make everyday life better for everyone. We are walking this path with more and more people: with employees, customers and partners who are leading the way together with us. 

#climateprotection #earthday #digitisation #o2 #recycling #sustainability