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Reduce, reuse and recycle. It´s not a new message, but it´s still an important one. We´re working hard to cut down on the amount of paper we use, send less rubbish to landfill and find new uses for old phones and other gadgets.

less paper and packaging

We now use 50% less paper than we did in 2008, and that´s thanks to many different initiatives. Like using less paper to package our phones, from the box to the manuals and other flyers inside. Or moving more people to paperless billing. And launching our new mini SIM cards.

less waste

We now recycle nearly 40% of our waste, but we´re working on ways to recycle more. Last year, for example, we tried having just one recycling bin for everything – paper, plastic, glass – in two of our offices. And it boosted recycling to over 56%. So we´ll do more of the same in 2010, across all our offices.

less to landfill

We´ve got several programmes that find new uses for old electronic equipment. We´ve donated over 1,000 computer monitors to the charity Computer Aid since 2007. In 2009 our employees raised over £16,000 for our charity fund by donating old phones.

As part of the being a responsible business, we comply with the Single Use Carrier Bag Charge (Regulations) 2010 for our Welsh stores. Between 1st October 2011 and 6th April 2012 we sold 12,899 carrier bags in our Welsh stores raising £515.96 in total. We are donating this money to the environmental charity WWF Cymru following a staff vote.

recycle & reward

In November 2009, we had a light bulb moment: people drop their old phones off in our stores, and, in return, we send them a cheque in the post. It´s been a huge hit. We´ve already given back over £500,000 to our customers.

We also pop a Recycle & Reward envelope in the boxes of all our new phones, again making it easy for customers to recycle their phone and get a big thank-you for doing so.

do your bit

Bring us your old phone. Just delete everything from the memory and take out the SIM, then drop it off in any Orange shop and we´ll post you a cheque.

read more about our recycle & reward scheme