Our 2014 Report Card: Progress Toward Goals

We’re in the thick of sustainability reporting season.

For those of you unfamiliar, just picture your actual and/or virtual desktop buried in long drafts, spreadsheets, sticky notes and memos. For my reporting comrades, congratulations on finding your keyboard and a bit of free time.

While we sift through the work done in 2014 and drive toward publishing our update later this year, we know it’s important to get an early assessment of how we’ve progressed. We’ve published our movement toward 2014 goals here.

We’re proud of the progress we’re making:

• With millions of pledges in the ItCanWait movement to prevent texting and driving, we wanted to turn that awareness into action. Last year, we saw more than 1.4 million activations of the DriveMode mobile app, which helps drivers avoid distractions from text message alerts and incoming calls.
• We successfully deployed more than 8,000 compressed natural gas vehicles in our fleet, a move that helps us save money and carbon emissions. In addition, we’ve deployed more than 2,600 hybrid-electric, all-electric and extended-range-electric vehicles, moving us toward our commitment to deploy approximately 15,000 alternative-fuel vehicles (AFVs) over a 10-year period through 2018.
• We’re growing membership in our employee networks and providing more career development for leaders of our employee resource groups, backed by our commitment to a diverse workforce and inclusive culture that help us attract and retain the best employees.

But we know there’s more to do:

• Last year, we collected 4.3 million cell phones for reuse and recycling — historically a respectable number for us, but still just missing our target of 4.5 million. As used phones become more valuable, we’re seeing more companies jump into the recycling market; we also know people are often throwing their phones in a drawer and forgetting about them. We’re continuing to investigate how can educate and engage our customers around the importance of recycling.
• We also missed our goal of deploying more than 9 MW of alternative energy in our portfolio last year, realizing only 3.7M of that projection. This was largely due to permitting delays and other logistics, and we expect many of these projects to come online in 2015. Still, we’re committed to managing our energy portfolio, and alternative energy is an important part of this.

We’re taking a comprehensive look this year at our goals and their relevance across our value chain of suppliers, customers, employees and communities. We plan to announce new, longer-term environmental and social goals later this year. We hope you’ll follow us at @ConnectToGood.