European Telecommunications Environmental Charter

The European Telecommunications Environmental Charter is a common environmental policy of the signatories who commit themselves to improve their environmental performance. To achieve this, an ETNO working group Environment has been established. Based on common requests, this group works out joint activities, e.g. common environmental indicators: environmental benchmarking; common ecological requests for products: guideline for environmentally responsible procurement; common environmental problems and environmental benefits: enhanced knowledge gained by workshops; common demand for external communications: and ETNO environmental report and conference. Besides these joint activities there are further ones which are better carried out in the individual companies. The implementation of an environmental management system (EMS), for instance, must be done individually. Several charter signatories are in the process of doing this. Swisscom has already been certified company-wide according to ISO 14001. Of course an EMS will considerably improve the environmental management in the company and because an EMS includes a set of environmental indicators-it also will be the basis for a more extensive environmental benchmarking; among companies. Environmental indicators, especially energy indicators, are essential in order to get a continuous environmental improvement