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DIRECTV's
Sustainability MissionEnvironmental stewardship is an increasingly important aspect of our business. From our corporate offices to our hardware to our van fleet, the actions we take to conserve energy and reduce waste can have an impact on the footprint we create. At DIRECTV, we understand that it's our responsibility as a global corporate citizen to advocate for and execute significant environmental change.
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"Sustainability : Overview : DIRECTV's Sustainability Mission"
"Sustainability : Overview : Where we are today"
Where we are today and where we're going
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Increasing energy efficiency
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has named DIRECTV a 2013 ENERGY STAR® Partner of the Year for its outstanding contribution to energy efficiency and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Today DIRECTV is the industry leader in energy efficient product design and is the only company in its industry to receive an EPA Partner of the Year award as well as the ENERGY STAR award for Excellence in Energy Efficient Product Design—an award we've won for the past three years! Since 2009, more than 95% of the new receivers we deliver to our customers are ENERGY STAR qualified.* The ENERGY STAR qualified receivers we purchased in 2012 alone will combine to save over 900 million kilowatt-hours of electricity every year.
*Genie™ HD DVR (Model HR-34) is not an ENERGY STAR qualified receiver.
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DIRECTV Leads the Industry in Energy-Efficient Product Design
Fully committed to designing its products to be as energy-efficient as possible, DIRECTV is a longtime participant in the ENERGY STAR® program, operated jointly by the Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Energy. The ENERGY STAR program sets energy-efficiency standards for many types of electronic products including appliances, computers, televisions, and the receivers DIRECTV uses to deliver television services (also known as "set-top boxes").
More than 95% of the receivers we've produced since joining the program are ENERGY STAR qualified.* What does this mean? According to the EPA, an ENERGY STAR qualified receiver is 45% more energy-efficient than non-qualified receivers. Not only that, but the ENERGY STAR qualified receivers we purchased in 2011 alone combine to save over 900 million kilowatt-hours of electricity every year. DIRECTV is, in fact, the only company in the industry to win the ENERGY STAR Award for Excellence in Energy-Efficient Product Design for the last three years.
In 2012 we also won the Alliance to Save Energy's (ASE) prestigious Innovative Star of Energy Efficiency Award. We are proud to have been recognized by ASE as an industry leader in energy-efficient product design.
But we're not stopping there. Looking ahead, we're working to make our technology even more efficient. With DIRECTV systems in the home, we're moving from installing a separate receiver for each TV to a state-of-the-art Whole-Home setup that uses a single central HD DVR server, known as Genie™*, and thin Client boxes for each additional TV. These thin Clients use considerably less energy than standard HD receivers, while providing full HD DVR functionality on every connected TV in the home, all from one HD DVR. With this Whole-Home setup, our goal is to reduce the average annual electricity used by a new three-room HD DVR customer by 25% by 2013 when compared to our 2011 baseline. And in the future, we plan to keep making this Whole-Home setup even more efficient.
*Genie™ HD DVR (Model HR-34) is not an ENERGY STAR qualified receiver.
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"Sustainability : Overview : Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions"
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Reducing Greenhouse
Gas EmissionsDIRECTV is the first U.S. satellite television company to participate in the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), for which we received a score of 91 out of 100-the highest score in 2012 for any first-time S&P 500 or Global 500 respondent. We also received a "B" for our performance score. We're proud of these achievements, but also recognize that our work is just beginning.
We are working to expand our carbon reporting, including evaluating other metrics and additional GRI indicators, and further our efforts to reduce our carbon footprint. By 2015, we'll cut emissions by 5% from our 2011 greenhouse gas emissions of approximately 200,000 metric tons carbon dioxide equivalent. This percentage equals the same amount of emissions produced by the annual electricity use of 1,200 homes or the carbon sequestered by more than 2,000 acres of pine forest. We also plan to maximize our efforts by collaborating with our suppliers in implementing sustainability practices, as well as applying these practices to our non-U.S. operations.
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Our Carbon Footprint
2011 marked a milestone for DIRECTV as we measured our carbon footprint for the first time. Our total Scope 1 and Scope 2 footprint was 202,665 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MTCO2e). Scope 1 emissions are direct emissions (such as those from our vehicles) while Scope 2 emissions are indirect (such as the electricity we purchase). The main sources of our footprint are our fleet of vehicles (representing about 55% of our combined footprint) and electricity use in our facilities (representing about 40% of our combined footprint).
We realize that our impact isn't limited to our own operations so we also track and report on Scope 3 emissions. What are Scope 3 emissions? Per the GHG Protocol, these are indirect emissions that are a consequence of DIRECTV's activities but occur from sources we do not control. In other words, while we don't control these emission sources, we do have influence over them and as a responsible corporate citizen, we feel it is important to work to reduce these impacts.
Transportation and Distribution
We estimate the emissions associated with third party delivery of our products from suppliers to our warehouses as well as delivery directly to our customers. In 2011 this equaled 58,282 MTCO2.Business travel
We track and estimate the emissions associated with employee business travel, specifically for air travel and car rentals. In 2011 this equaled 10,500 MTCO2.Receivers
We are working on developing estimates of the electricity consumed, and associated emissions, by our receivers in the homes and businesses of our customers.To contribute an additional degree of accountability to our footprint, we hired Deloitte & Touche to perform an independent audit of our footprint. Nothing came to their attention that would have led them to believe that our Statement of Greenhouse Gas Emissions was misstated; you can read our Statement of Greenhouse Gas Emissions with their Independent Review Report here. In our first CDP response we scored a 91 out of a possible 100, just one point below the threshold for the prestigious Carbon Disclosure Leadership Index. You can read our 2012 response to the CDP questionnaire here.
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Working to Reduce our Footprint
Measuring our carbon footprint is only the first step in our journey toward reducing our impacts. Now that we know what our footprint is and where our impacts occur, we are turning our attention to reducing our emissions. How are we doing this?
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Our Fleet managers are working hard every day to reduce the amount of fuel used by our vehicles. Some of our strategies include:
- Using GPS-based directions for our technicians so they can use the shortest route to their destination and then dispatching them to additional nearby jobs to reduce extra travel.
- Maintaining our fleet for maximum fuel efficiency.
- Testing alternative fuel vehicles.
- We have 40 propane vans in service in California today. Not only can these vans reduce our carbon footprint but they also can reduce local air pollutants such as nitrogen oxide (NOx).
- We constantly seek new ways to reduce energy consumption in our facilities. From building management strategies to lighting retrofits to energy audits, we are employing a variety of strategies to become more efficient. As we develop our new headquarters campus in El Segundo, California, we are taking sustainability into account every step of the way and are designing buildings that are significantly more energy efficient and meet green building standards.
- In an effort to tackle our Scope 3 emissions, we are continually looking for new and innovative solutions. We are looking at all portions of the business, ranging from more efficiently loading shipments to take freight trucks off the road to continually striving to make our receivers more efficient.
Beyond our fleet, we are looking at all aspects of our operations to find ways to reduce emissions. For example:
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"Sustainability : Overview : Repurposing our electronics"
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Repurposing our electronics
As a satellite television company, it's important for us to have a plan for reducing our electronic waste. First, we refurbish used equipment we recover from customers' homes, reducing the number of new receivers we produce and the resources required to produce and ship them. In fact, we will refurbish more than eight million receivers in 2012 alone. Second, if we can't refurbish recovered equipment, our policy is to recycle 100% of these electronics, including receivers and hardware, with an R2-certified electronics recycler. Third, we regularly redesign our services to require less electronic equipment, like our new all-in-one receiver, the Genie™ Advanced Whole–Home DVR that can reduce the overall number of receivers in a customer's home. Fourth, in 2013 we launched a recycling site that makes it easy for our customers to recycle their unused electronics for free—not just DIRECTV devices but just about any piece of electronics. Just log your electronics on our site, and we’ll send you a shipping label to send them to our recycler*.
*If the site determines that your receiver is one that DIRECTV can still use, you will be prompted to call us. We will arrange for it to be refurbished
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Recycling E-Waste
DIRECTV aims to responsibly recycle all recovered electronics and components which cannot be put back into use. In 2011, we simplified the process by engaging a single national recycling vendor. Since consolidating our recycling program, we have recycled more than 10 million pounds of electronic waste such as non-reparable or outdated receivers. All of this electronic waste was handled by an R2-certified recycler. Our recycler has committed to rigorously tracking and auditing DIRECTV e-waste so no waste is exported.
They seek to reuse as much as possible and safely recycle the materials that cannot be reused with none of it going into a landfill. What kind of impact does this have? In just the second quarter of 2012 alone, our recycling saved the equivalent of more than 2 million kilowatt-hours of energy that would have been used to extract natural resources for new products.
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"Sustainability : Overview : Ramping up recycling"
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Ramping up recycling
We are working diligently to further reduce and recycle the waste produced by our own day-to-day operations.
In 2011, we recycled 3,900 tons of our own waste like cardboard and paper. That's equivalent to the waste disposed by more than 7,000 people every year. By 2015, we plan to divert at least 75% of the waste from our own operations from landfills and are redoubling our recycling efforts, redesigning our packaging, and composting in our offices.
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All Paper Is Not the Same
The kind of paper we use makes a big difference. In 2011 we purchased more than 30 million pounds of FutureMark paper for our advertising circulars.
This U.S.-manufactured paper contains over 90% recycled content (of which 30% is post-consumer content). The mill where the paper is produced is certified by the Forest Stewardship Council, (FSC), Sustainable Forestry Initiative, (SFI), and Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification, (PEFC), which means the small amount of new fiber content used is produced and harvested in responsible ways.
Compared with paper with no recycled content, using this paper means that more than 200,000 fewer trees are required and the greenhouse gas emission reductions are equivalent to taking more than 2,500 cars off the road for a year.*
We are seeking paperless alternatives wherever possible. In 2012, we made receiver manuals available electronically and removed paper manuals from our receiver packaging, which resulted in a paper savings equal to more than 30,000 trees.* We also encourage all of our customers to enroll in paperless billing and to make their payments online (or better yet, to sign up for automatic bill payments). By 2015 we expect 35% of our customers to be enrolled in paperless billing, resulting in a significant reduction of paper use altogether.
In addition to our circulars and receiver manuals, we are working to better understand the breadth of the paper and packaging we use across our company, from billing to shipping to marketing. We will continue to look for opportunities to integrate sustainable paper options, such as certified and recycled content products, more deeply into our processes.
*Environmental impact estimates were made using the Environmental Paper Network Paper Calculator Version 3.2. For more information visit www.papercalculator.org.
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"Sustainability : Overview : Hot off the press"
Hot off the Press
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DIRECTV Talks Energy Efficiency With the E.P.A.
DIRECTV attends two industry events on energy with the E.P.A. -
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ENERGY STAR® Partner of the Year
The EPA has recognized DIRECTV for its outstanding contribution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. -
Our Sustainability Plan
Get the inside scoop on our sustainability plan and how we are tracking our progress.
"Sustainability : Overview : Sustainability Questions?"
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Have some questions about our sustainability program? Contact us! sustainability@DIRECTV.com