Verizon is stepping up its efforts to conserve energy and protect the environment — and the company is offering its customers convenient ways to do the same. Among the efforts are a Verizon Business tree-planting program to encourage large-business< customers to sign up for paper-free billing, and a Verizon Telecom plan to add 100 energy-efficient hybrid-engine sedans to its fleet of service vehicles.

These programs complement a wide range of current initiatives through which Verizon is conserving energy and protecting environmental resources while also benefiting the community. They include Verizon Wireless’ Hopeline(R) program, which recycles no-longer-used cell phones to help victims of domestic violence; reducing the consumption of electricity by removing obsolete network equipment in more than 400 Verizon facilities nationwide; and an industrywide effort, organized by Verizon, to investigate methods of measuring and reducing electrical power consumption in voice and data communications networks.

Beginning on Earth Day, April 22, Verizon Business will plant a tree for every large-business customer that registers to conveniently pay its bills online. Monthly billing statements for these customers are often hundreds of pages long, so the potential reduction in the use of paper is significant. The program is an outgrowth of Verizon’s partnership with 11 other American companies that founded the U.S. eTree initiative in 2006. The initiative encourages registered shareholders of public companies to receive all shareholder communications such as annual reports and proxy materials electronically rather than as paper documents. Verizon also processed about 70 million consumer bills online in 2006 alone, sparing approximately 6,000 trees by reducing the amount of paper used.

Following its announcement last month of a precedent-setting pilot project to deploy 13 specially designed gasoline- and electric-powered service vans, Verizon is now ordering 100 hybrid-engine sedans for use in five states. In addition, in New Jersey and Texas, Verizon is trialing the use of 20 percent bio-diesel fuel to power service vehicles. The fuel is a domestic, renewable resource that is biodegradable, nontoxic and is projected to reduce greenhouse gases. Also in those two states, Verizon will use environmentally friendly lubricants made from vegetable oils as part of the process to cut sections of fiber-optic cable where the company is installing and maintaining its digital all-fiber-optic FiOS services. These lubricants are far more biodegradable than the traditional versions.

Verizon Wireless encourages consumers to recycle no-longer-used wireless phones and batteries by dropping them off at any Verizon Wireless Communications store. This is part of the company’s year-long HopeLine(R) phone recycling program, which in 2006 collected more than 900,000 no-longer-used wireless phones and accessories and 60,000 pounds of rechargeable batteries, enabling more than $1.3 million in donations to local domestic violence agencies. The company supplies collection boxes, posters, brochures and more free of charge to people interested in holding a collection drive.

To reduce the consumption of electricity, Verizon is powering down and removing obsolete network equipment in more than 400 facilities nationwide. This has cut consumption by 24 million kilowatt hours and has reduced carbon dioxide emissions — a major greenhouse-gas contributor — by 17,900 metric tons in 2006 alone. That’s equivalent to the annual emissions generated by the electricity used in approximately 2,300 households.

The company is steadily reducing the amount of greenhouse-gas emissions by approximately 334,000 metric tons every year through energy conservation and recycling efforts. The reductions are equivalent to
  776,744 barrels of oil
  278,333 acres of pine or fir forests storing carbon for one year
  112,458 tons of waste recycled instead of landfilled
  72,294 passenger cars not driven for one year
  2,738 acres of forest preserved from deforestation
  1,697 railcars of coal burned
  The annual power consumption of 42,875 households
  The propane gas burned by 13,916,667 cylinders used for home barbecues

The combined effect of Verizon’s energy conservation and efficiency measures reduced the company’s total electricity consumption in 2006 by 94.5 million kilowatt hours and thus reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 70,300 metric tons. That’s equivalent to taking more than 15,000 passenger cars off the road for one year.

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