CASE STUDY
BT Home Hub 5
Making sustainability the
primer for product innovation
BT’s Net Good vision is to help society live within the constraints of our planet’s resources through our
products and people. The programme’s 2020 goal is to help customers reduce carbon emissions by at least
three times the end-to-end carbon impact of our own business.
Finding innovative ways to reduce the environmental impact of our products and services is essential
to those aims – working with suppliers to reduce carbon outputs and helping customers cut emissions
whenever they use our products and services. The BT Home Hub 5, our latest wireless broadband router,
is a great example. In its development we kept its carbon footprint to the bare minimum by analysing its
environmental profile throughout its lifecycle.
We are working closely with our suppliers to design less resource and
energy-intensive products. The world’s resources are limited,
and we are working towards creating a circular economy
without any waste.”
Gabrielle Ginér, Programme Manager, Net Good, BT Group
CASE STUDY
BT Home Hub 5
BT Home Hub 5 combines environmental best practice with
the next generation of superfast fibre home broadband
Aligning environmental and
customer benefits
Product and process design
considerations
BT wireless broadband routers are designed to
reinforce the success of new services such as
BT Infinity superfast fibre. The BT Home Hub
4 and Home Hub 5 are the latest to arrive.
Coupled with BT Broadband and BT Infinity,
they’ll provide faster, more stable connections
to home users and also support BT’s newlylaunched Net Good programme.
For BT, it’s a story of continuous innovation.
BT has been working with the University
of Cambridge to develop Designing Our
Tomorrow – a framework for aligning and
quantifying benefits across a range of
criteria – environmental, customer-oriented
and commercial.
The BT Net Good vision is to help society
live within the constraints of our planet’s
resources through our products and people.
The programme’s 2020 goal is to help
customers reduce carbon emissions by at
least three times the end-to-end carbon
impact of our own business. In order to
achieve this, BT is working to enhance
the consumer experience while exploring
sustainable options for products, services
and processes.
This entails encouraging and embodying
sustainable practices while making the product
functionally, aesthetically and technologically
appealing. Why does that matter? Simple. A
product offering superior broadband wireless
connectivity to customers will surely sell
in large numbers. And that carries with it a
sustainability multiplier: the more sold, the
greater the environmental benefit arising from
each product innovation.
Using this framework, BT examined the carbon
footprints of a sample of its consumer devices,
including BT Home Hubs, and considered
three major factors affecting environmental
performance. They were: materials used in
manufacture and packaging; electrical power
consumption; and transport – especially the
last-mile for delivery or collection. The first BT
product to make use of the new approach was
the BT Home Hub 3.
Tripling product recovery rates to
save emissions and cost
Cardboard boxes are so ubiquitous that people
might not immediately see how they would
fit into the sustainability cycle. But the Swap
Box brainwave emerged from an in-depth
consideration of how to maximise the value
of materials used in the manufacture and
packaging of BT wireless routers. It embodies
the idea of using the packaging itself – usually
one of the first items to be discarded – to
encourage ultimate reuse and recycling. The
Swap Box is used to both deliver replacement
units and to recover old units.
With BT Home Hub 3, the Swap Box idea
succeeded in tripling the recovery rate for
replaced wireless router units. Of those
recovered, three-quarters can be successfully
refurbished and reused, while the rest can
be recycled.
Over one year, the sharp rise in reuse saw
a carbon emissions saving of 1,755 tonnes
from avoided manufacturing, with the
added environmental gain of more than 85
tonnes of used BT equipment kept out of the
electronic waste disposal cycle. A reused hub
costs around a third of a new one: the Swap
Box trial found initial annual savings of at
least £2.8 million.
“Swap Box truly is a case of sustainability-led
innovation leading to wider commercial
benefits,” says Ken Browning, general
manager, propositions, BT Retail. Now BT
plans an updated Swap Box for the launch of
BT Home Hub 5, and will extend the concept
to further generations of wireless routers.
Slim-line letterbox design
eliminates 86,000 vehicle miles
a year
With the design of BT Home Hub 4, BT turned
to the carbon savings attainable by cutting
out last-mile home deliveries and collections.
That was also linked directly to improving the
BT customer experience. The frustrations of
missing and rescheduling a delivery, or having
to pick up packages from a depot or post office,
would be a thing of the past.
The BT team’s focus this time was not just
on the packaging, but its contents. And the
solution had the simplicity of every great
idea: make the router a different shape, pack
it in a slim-line box, and post it through the
letterbox. Bingo. No more customers having
to wait in; no more second delivery attempts;
no more wasteful car journeys to collect a
missed item.
The Net Good programme is built on successive innovations, and BT Home
Hub 5 is the latest step. We work closely with our suppliers to make
our products and business operations more sustainable. By putting
customers at the heart of what we hope to achieve, we want to help
society live within our planet’s resource constraints.
Mark Shackleton, Chief Technologist, Energy & Sustainability, BT Technology, Service & Operations
CASE STUDY
BT Home Hub 5
This improves the customer experience and
brings a significant carbon saving. There
were challenges, of course. The new, slimmer
router design needed clever spring-loaded
feet, but they also made it 100 per cent
stable on most surfaces. That’s innovation
breeding innovation.
Most deliveries now succeed at first attempt,
and the Net Good environmental benefits arise
from the vehicle miles saved compared to a
traditional signed-for delivery. The savings
– including couriers, trips by customers after
failed delivery attempts, and redeliveries –
amount to 86,000 vehicle miles a year. That’s
equivalent to 37 tonnes of CO2. “We’re making
life easier for customers while benefiting
the environment,” says Will Popham, senior
propositions manager, BT Retail.
Reducing power usage in the BT
Home Hub next generation
Hard on the heels of BT Home Hub 4 comes
BT Home Hub 5. It looks similar to its
predecessor, but has four Gigabit Ethernet
ports (more than both the BT Home Hub
3 and Home Hub 4) along with dual-band
wireless. It will get the best from the
forthcoming BT superfast fibre 300Mpbs
home broadband service.
Here, too, careful thought was given to the
environment. Since electricity consumption
is usually the biggest factor in the home
broadband carbon footprint, intelligent power
management monitors individual functions
in the BT Home Hub 5. It automatically puts
them in power saving mode when they’re idle.
VDSL, used for BT Infinity, is also built into the
device, which means they don’t require the
separate Openreach modems that went with
previous hubs.
“The Net Good programme is built on
successive innovations, and BT Home Hub
5 is the latest step,” says Mark Shackleton,
chief technologist, Energy & Sustainability, BT
Technology, Service & Operations. “We work
closely with our suppliers to make our products
and business operations more sustainable. By
putting customers at the heart of what we
hope to achieve, we want to help society live
within our planet’s resource constraints.”
The Net Good environmental benefit arises
from a power reduction of up to 30 per
cent when BT Home Hub 5 is deployed
with BT Infinity, compared with previous BT
Home Hub configurations. A saving of some
13,000 tonnes of CO2 per year is forecast
once BT Home Hub 5 is rolled out to new BT
Infinity customers.
Packaging is also made from recycled
cardboard, using soy-based inks in place of
volatile petrochemical derivatives, while a
biodegradable outer layer instead of plastic
shrink-wrap further reduces the use of
oil-based ingredients. Set-up instructions
are printed inside the box, not on a separate
leaflet, saving paper and printing with their
associated environmental impacts. And
there’s no software to install from CD-ROMs,
which would potentially end up in landfills:
everything is set out on the BT website.
We’re making life easier for customers while benefiting the environment.
Will Popham, Senior Propositions Manager, BT Retail
Offices worldwide
The services described in this publication are subject
to availability and may be modified from time to time.
Services and equipment are provided subject to the
respective British Telecommunications plc standard
conditions of contract. Nothing in this publication
forms any part of any contract.
© British Telecommunications plc 2013
Registered office: 81 Newgate Street, London EC1A 7AJ
Registered in England No: 1800000
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