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 11/13