Waste management

From the buildings we occupy to the phones we sell, we seek to minimize waste in our operations.

Solid Waste and Recycling

Beyond traditional office recycling, which we maintain in more than 130 employee sites, we manage a program to reclaim network resources such as copper telecommunications wire and central office equipment. The AT&T Supply Chain Investment Recovery group works company-wide to reuse, sell and recycle materials. The group sent less than five percent of the materials it received to the landfill. The Investment Recovery group oversees six strategically located warehouses that handle recycling for a majority of the 50 states.

In 2010, we kept more than 56.9 million pounds of these materials from landfills, including:

The pounds of material declined in 2010 because of changes in how we processed some of this material through our Investment Recovery warehouses; for instance, cardboard and lead acid batteries no longer ship through our central system. They are now being recycled locally to reduce transportation expenses.

Declines can also be attributed to economical influences as well.

Also, company-wide we're working to make the most efficient use of our resources, reducing the amount of scrap we produced.

In 2010, our investment recovery program began expanding its expertise to assist several international groups, and we expect this to grow in 2011.

E-waste

AT&T is committed to handling e-waste appropriately. In 2010, we collected more than 96,000 computers, monitors and servers for donation, reuse and recycling. This included:

In 2010, we issued an RFP for new suppliers for handling e-waste across our entire company, bringing further consistency to our program. The program will be fully implemented in 2011. For information on our cell phone recycling program see our Connecting People and Business section.

Regulated Waste

In 2010, AT&T recycled more than 70 percent of its regulated waste (universal, hazardous, exempt and special waste), and non-hazardous waste through the AT&T Resource Recovery Center. This translates into recycling 10,000 tons of the 14,000 tons total of regulated waste that AT&T managed. This did not include normal refuse handled by solid waste vendors or municipal waste disposal; however, it does include water removed and managed from underground vaults.

Print 360

We have a relationship with Xerox Corp. to help us complete a Print 360 review of the printing devices in our office buildings. As part of this effort to consolidate and replace this equipment, we removed more than 19,000 devices from nearly 3,000 AT&T locations. Xerox estimates this effort reduced our annual printer-associated energy use by 38 percent and our affiliated GHG emissions by 32 percent per year.

Print360 continues to assess the print environment, consolidating devices wherever practicable, retiring old equipment and replacing it as appropriate with newer, more energy-efficient technology. During the first half of 2011, we will pilot an initiative to increase duplex print, reduce banner/separator pages and decrease color ink usage. The pilot will take place in Dallas, and the results will determine if the initiative is a candidate for enterprise-wide implementation.

Environmental Compliance

We are committed to complying with all applicable environmental, health and safety laws and regulations and to maintaining and improving management systems throughout the company to meet our compliance obligations. AT&T's operating companies had no significant environmental compliance-related enforcement actions (defined as those that have resulted in sanctions equal to or exceeding $100,000) in 2010.