Optus on its new climate action plan target

“By the end of 2025, 100% of our electricity requirements will be backed by renewable energy sources, and we will reduce and recycle over 90% of our electronic waste.”

Kelly Bayer Rosmarin
CEO, Optus

Environment: Repurposing mobile phones with reply-paid recycling satchels

Over the past 25 years, Optus has been a founding member of MobileMuster – a national recycling program for the mobile industry. The telecom company has supported the program to keep mobile phones out of landfill by hosting collection points in retail stores and including reply-paid recycling satchels in Optus pre-paid mobile bundles.

• Advocating mobile phone recycling

Under the “Donate your Device” initiative, users can now make a positive impact towards the environment and help others by giving their spare devices a second life. Optus stores also collect phones from their customers and assesses them, cleans them up and wipes the data to make them ready for distribution by their trusted charity partner. This service is open to all devices, including modems, TV streaming devices, home phones, etc., all free of charge!

Social: Donate your data and help the underprivileged

The ‘Donate your data’ program is focused towards enabling customers to donate unused data to young people, their families, and other Australians in need. It has opened the door for people and families to connect in a way that was not previously possible. The program initially started to enable internet access for many young Australians to connect them to opportunities to learn, look for work, and continue with other vital services.

Optus addressed the issue of digital divide and started the ‘Donate your Data’ program in 2019 to provide free connectivity to people experiencing disadvantage and hardship. Additionally, Optus has announced an expansion to this program to close the digital divide even further by including not only young people in need but also their families and people experiencing crisis.

With generous customer donations and the support of a range of charity partners, the telco has harnessed the power of collaboration to ensure data gets to where it is needed most.

Governance: Optus Accessibility and Inclusion Action Plan

Accessibility, Inclusivity and Support is Optus’ top priority for their employees, customers and community. And the Optus Accessibility and Inclusion Action Plan aims to achieve it, powering accessibility and inclusivity in all aspects of the industry.

The key demographic of the Optus Accessibility and Inclusion Action Plan is the disabled community. With that in mind, Optus aims to create more inclusive and accessible opportunities for the disabled on both the larger scale of the workplace and their place in society with its 4 key pillars.

These pillars aim to minimize and remove barriers to access for the disabled are as follows:

Workplace

• Establishing a ‘Senior Leader Accessibility Action Group’
• Training talent acquisition on recruiting disabled employees

Communities

• Official partner of the Australian Paralympic Team
• Conducting business with disability advocating employer

Customers

• Retail stores in compliance with ‘Disability Discrimination Act’
• An inclusive design approach for products & services

Innovation

• ‘Optus Future Makers’ social innovation program develops technologies in support of people with disability

twimbit Takeaways: Transform from ‘take, make, dispose’ way of operations, to one that is based on sustainability

Optus has brought its vision of embedding sustainability to its culture, decision-making and operations to life. Through their ‘Donate your data’ program and recycling mobile phones initiative, Optus has ensured that there is no excessive wastage of devices or data, making people consume and reuse responsibly.

The telco has differentiated on 3 key pillars:

• Invest in recycling and sustainable packaging to lower waste
• Develop solutions (such as data donation) to meet digital inclusion targets without stretching the current capacity
• Make ‘accessibility’ a ‘way of work’