Telecom News Bulletin

At Nokia their main focus is on sustainability of environment and it is embedded in all the departments like operations, production and services. This helps to create positive effects of mobile technology for consumers, enables us to make a real difference to the environment and to driving sustainable development.

Nokia’s china operations reflects the image and commitment to the environment, they are pretty much focused on the environment sustainability on both their Green building headquarter and manufacturing facility. Both are situated in greater Xingwang industrial park. This park is in Yizhuan. In this park along with Nokia, Nokia’s key suppliers are also present like Sanyo Energy, Ibiden Electronics, Inpac and Foxcomm precision components as tenants. This helps to produce mobile phone under stringent environmental standards for manufacturing, distribution, marketing, sales and product end-of-life. DHL takes care of all park logistic.

The THINKTANK Media, SOL and SDR conducted a research study in which they marked Xingwang industrial park the one of the largest and most complete industry value chains in the world. Their study shows the following statistical figures on annual basis :

1. Decreased energy consumption, which is equal to about 45000 tons of standard coal.
2. 88000 tons  of  carbon dioxide emissions are reduced.
3. Water conservation of a half million tons.
4. A reduction of packaging equivalent to the volume of sustainable logging of more than 1,500 hectares of Chinese red pine forests.
5. Direct economic benefit of the energy conservation alone of almost 100 Million US Dollars.

Nokia green building serves as the Nokia’s headquarter and is also serves as nokia’s R&D base covering the area of 70,000 m. and holds about 2000 employees. The building has been designed in accordance with LEED standards (leadership in energy design) comparing to other commercial buildings its features reduces water use by 37% and 20% less energy consumption. This all has been achieved through its design technique such as ‘breathing glass curtain walls, environmentally friendly parking area and roofing material with a high solar reflectance index to dissipate heat, central energy control systems for air conditioning, lighting and projectors.

The building is constructed in a way that 77.4% of the area is lighted by the natural daylight. Air conditioning lightning system is designed in such a way that it automatically shuts down after 15 minute standby. It receives LEED certification and becomes the first new construction gold certified commercial office building in china in April 2008. it was a great achievement and is recognized by Nokia around the world and many of the offices have adopted the sustainable practices from it.

It also has under ground parking space for 50% of parking and in open ground parking grass crates has been used to reduced the heat radiations and also reserved parking area for the vehicles which are environmental friendly eg low-emitting and fuel efficient vehicles, car pool. For reducing water usage on touch taps have installed in the bathrooms.

Nokia takes serious action for the sustainability of environment in the Middle East and Africa. The employees of nokia personally takes action to save the environment, they travel less by exchanging information in meeting conducted through videoconferences. Most of their employees use public transport, for that 49 line of bus shuttle service were designed to reduce the emission of carbon dioxide from their private vehicles or the employees use cycles, or probably walk to their work just to reduce the amount of carbon emissions. Nokia also appreciates employees to work from home if possible instead of coming to office when not necessary it helps in reduction of number of commuters. We use multifunctional printers for copy; fax and scan to minimized the need for print. We also focus on using recyclable materials and provide place for the collection of non-hazardous material for recycling.

Our efforts are mainly concerned to the consumer awareness regarding energy consumption and recycling. it has found that approximately two third other energy is lost from the mobile device when it is fully charged and unplugged from the device but the charger is still connected to the main it is called no load consumption of a charger. Nokia provide information by putting alerts in the mobile phones to unplug the charger after using it they were the first manufacturer to do so in may 2007. and has reduced no load energy consumption of our charger by 80% app.

Nokia is also operating world’s largest recycling operation. There are about 5000 nokia collection point in 85 countries in countries like south Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Egypt, lebonan,Jordan, uae and saudi Arabia the program is very successfully launched. Consumer’s brings unwanted and old mobiles and accessories nokia and other manufacturers also to the nokia customer care point to deposit them for recycling. All of the mobile parts can be recycled to produce new parts forts for bicycles, kettles or even dental fillings or to generate energy and that’s how nothing is got wasted.

The bad thing is that only 3% amongst the current mobile owners claim to recycle their devices. This figure was confirmed by a research in several countries of the world, which includes Nigeria and UAE. 370000 tonnes of the raw materials can be saved and reduction in gasses is like 6 millions cars taken off the road can be reduced if 4.6 billion mobile owners recycled at least one of their unwanted devices