Energy and climate

Energy saving and CO2 reduction


Sony Ericsson is committed to tackling the issues causing climate change. While we continuously work to minimise the energy consumption of our products, we believe that all parties in our industry need to work together towards a sustainable future. Following the support of the Bali Communiqué in November 2007 and the Poznań Communiqué in December 2008, Sony Ericsson signed the Copenhagen Communiqué to continue to support a comprehensive United Nations framework for tackling climate change.

GreenHeart™

GreenHeart™ is the result of years of innovation to bring you phones that offer you a greener choice. Sony Ericsson announced the Sony Ericsson GreenHeart™ portfolio, which introduces green innovations that reduce the overall environmental impact of the phone without compromising on style or features. Thanks to the all the following features of GreenHeart™, the overall CO2 emissions from the phone are reduced by 15%:

•An electronic, in-phone manual replaces the standard paper version and gives you convenient, instant access to your product support guide wherever you are

•E-manual also saves over 90% in paper, and the more compact packaging reduces the environmental impact of transporting the final product

•Made from a minimum of 50% recycled plastics

•Optimised display light sensor that uses less energy

•The phone is coloured with waterborne paint that lowers exposure to Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC) and can be transported as a raw material before being reconstituted with local water at the assembly plant, significantly reducing transport-associated CO2 emissions.

To learn more about our GreenHeart™ products, please visit www.sonyericsson.com/GreenHeart

Our commitment

In 2009, Sony Ericsson reformatted the company’s climate-related goals from intensity-based to absolute. We did this because we believe it's every company’s responsibility to reduce its impact on the global climate, and that responsibility should be independent of production output. An intensity-based target does not guarantee that the amount of greenhouse gases emitted to the atmosphere is actually reduced, while an absolute target specifies a reduction of a particular quantity of greenhouse gases emitted to the atmosphere.

The new, absolute, Sony Ericsson targets are therefore:

•By 2015 reduce the total greenhouse gas emissions from the full life cycle of Sony Ericsson’s products by 15% (based on 2008 year levels)
•By 2015 reduce the total greenhouse gas emissions from Sony Ericsson’s internal activities by 20% (based on 2008 year levels)

Sony Ericsson’s impact on the global climate will be continuously measured using the Greenhouse Gas Protocol - A Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard.

Our performance

Between 2007 and 2008, Sony Ericsson managed to reduce the total greenhouse gas emissions from a total of 64 426 057 kg CO2 equivalents* in 2007 to a total of 57 390 998 kg CO2 equivalents in 2008. A large part of this reduction was due to reduced business travel.

*The effect of the various greenhouse gases is measured by converting them into so-called CO2 equivalents. One CO2 equivalent equals the effect of the emission of 1 kilogram of CO2.


Renewable energy
One initiative to reduce Sony Ericsson’s negative impact on the global climate is purchasing renewable electricity for our office sites. From 2008, all Sony Ericsson sites in Sweden purchase only electricity defined as a “good environmental choice” by the Swedish Society for Nature Conversation. This electricity is made exclusively from renewable energy sources, i.e. wind, solar and hydro. The electricity used in office sites in Sweden represents about 40% of the total electricity used in all Sony Ericsson sites.


Unplug the charger
During the use of a mobile phone the product's environmental impact comes from energy use. Even when electrical products are switched off, if they are left in the wall socket they still consume some small amounts of electricity – so-called standby or no-load power consumption. Most of the energy used for many consumer electronic products comes from products in this standby mode and not when the product is used. All the small chargers and power converters connected to the grid are draining small amounts of power; and the drain from many sources leads to a substantial amount of energy being wasted. The charger should therefore be unplugged from the wall socket once the product is fully charged to avoid energy being wasted.

Energy efficiency of chargers
Sony Ericsson is proud to deliver the most efficient chargers in terms of no-load power. We have worked hard to minimise the power loss in standby mode of our chargers. Our chargers are sold all over the world together with our mobile phones and accessories. All new models after 2005 meet the EU voluntary Code of Conduct (CoC) for power supplies as well as the requirements of Energy Star. In fact, they are 67% better than the EU CoC power requirements. The no-load power is not more than 0.1 W for all new charger models after 2005.

Sony Ericsson introduced new chargers for our products in 2001. These chargers would have met the EU Code of Conduct (CoC) that was presented in 2004 and gave 0.3 W as the recommendation. All phones sold globally since 2003 have chargers that meet the EU voluntary CoC for power supplies as well as the requirements of Energy Star Level 4 .



Work together
Sony Ericsson has participated in the development of a score rating for the energy consumption of mobile phone chargers as part of the Integrated Product Policy (IPP) pilot programme under the European Commission . Participating companies were major mobile phone manufacturers working to develop a rating for charger energy efficiency in no-load mode. All our chargers, except the BST-60, are rated as four-star chargers, and our GreenHeartTM concept charger is rated as a five-star charger, with a no-load power consumption of 0.0035W.

Sony Ericsson is also supporting the industry’s adoption of a standardised charger interface. We will introduce chargers and phones with this interface well ahead of the timeline desired. Our portfolio of chargers is already the best in the industry in terms of efficiency and energy consumption.




Life cycle assessment (LCA)
In spring 2008, Sony Ericsson commissioned a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) carried out as a master's thesis. The LCA included the extraction of raw materials, manufacturing of components, inbound and outbound transportation, utilisation and end-of-life treatment for a mobile phone with a 3.5-year lifetime. The impact of our offices and travel were also included, and split on a yearly basis to be included as part of the overhead for phone production. The LCA showed that a mobile phone with an expected 3.5-year lifespan produces a total of 23.5 kg of CO2 . This is equivalent to driving 150 km (95 miles) in a typical family car.

For each phone, the impact from Sony Ericsson’s own activities is up to 0.85 kg CO2-eq/phone, or 3.6% of the total impact. This is why Sony Ericsson has focused much more attention on reducing the impact of our products than of our own activities. Independently of that, we are now starting to report all our internal impacts in line with the GHG Protocol.

Environmental declaration

Through our Environmental Declarations we invite any interested parties to obtain factual information from us. The Environmental Declaration gives information on the most relevant environmental aspects of each product such as material content, energy consumption, batteries, packaging and recycling.

To read the declaration for a specific product, go to the Environmental declarations page on one of our local sites and select your product.