Our Employees are up to the QChallenge!

How much do you know about your carbon footprint?

During the month of May, we challenged our employees and some of our friends in the community to learn more about their carbon footprints by participating in the “CO2 + U QChallenge.” More than 1,800 employees from more than 120 offices around the globe – including India, China, the U.K., and the U.S. – signed up!

The QChallenge included daily actions to help participants learn more about their carbon footprints, as well as Qualcomm’s corporate CO2 emissions, and what steps they can take to decrease them. For example, one day we challenged employees to eat vegetarian – another, we called on them to explore alternate transportation for their errands or daily commutes.

Of course, it’s one thing to map your alternate commute and another to actually take it. On May 20, approximately 400 of our employees in San Diego participated in Bike-to-Work Day and stopped in at the Qualcomm pit stop to cool off in the shade and enjoy complimentary breakfast burritos. Our employees in the San Francisco Bay Area and Boulder, Colorado also participated in their local Bike-to-Work Day events.

Our employees’ enthusiasm didn’t stop there. Each Friday, we also invited participants to share something they’d learned through the campaign, in person or on social media using #CO2QChallenge, or come up with a “bonus challenge.” Employees created “bonus challenges” that ranged from installing solar panels to planting herb gardens to reducing their use of paper towels and cups.

Throughout the campaign, we highlighted our colleagues who go far beyond the call to action in their daily lives – from two employees in San Diego who run 13 miles to work once a week to an engineer in our Taipei office who has adopted a wide range of habits to reduce her carbon footprint, including using recycled bags for shopping, taking public transportation whenever possible and using stainless steel chopsticks at work.

In honor of each person or organization who participated in our QChallenge, Qualcomm will make a $10 charitable donation to an international environmental NGO working to address climate change.

Engaging our employees in our sustainability initiatives is an important part of our 2030 Sustainability Vision, which we announced earlier this year with the launch of our 2015 Qualcomm Sustainability Report.

Understanding climate and water impacts across our value chain is another key aspect of our 2030 Sustainability Vision. As a company of inventors and engineers who are working to develop innovative solutions to the most pressing global challenge we face today, Qualcomm is committed to working to address the seriousness of climate change to ensure a safe and sustainable world for future generations.

That’s why we signed onto the Climate Declaration and joined the American Business Act on Climate Pledge, and it’s why last fall we announced our global greenhouse gas emissions reduction goal to reduce absolute Scope 1 and Scope 2 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from our global operations by 30 percent, compared to a 2014 baseline, by 2025. We’ll be welcoming our first Environmental Defense Fund Climate Corps Fellow this summer to help us further enhance our understanding of our overall greenhouse gas emissions and opportunities to reduce them.

Want to learn more about our efforts in this space? Check out our sustainability website or follow @Qualcomm_GA on Twitter.