Erik Raphael, Director of the BT Consumer Devices Business, presented Huawei with the Silver Status BFSF Award for its work in saving CO2 across its manufacturing processes and for reducing carbon footprints of its products by identifying opportunities to improve efficiency, implementing eco design best practices and by collaborating across its end-to-end supply chain.
Huawei is a supplier of electronic devices to BT and having taken part in the first year of the Forum, Huawei has been recognised for its outstanding performance in making BT products and services more sustainable. BT’s technical experts worked with Huawei’s research and development team to review levels of innovation in sustainability and provide guidance and support to make improvements.
Erik Raphael, Director of BT’s Consumer Devices team, said: “The first year of the Better Future Supplier Forum has been a great success. Huawei has not only demonstrated that it has fully understood and internalised the key principles of sustainability, it has applied them as well. I’m really excited about building on this progress and welcome those suppliers that are joining the Forum in the coming months.”
Alex Deng, Chief Sustainability Officer, Huawei said: "BT BFSF is a win-win partnership for the two companies. It has made significant progress in ensuring sustainable growth is embedded in product development, production and implementation. True sustainable growth can only be achieved with a rigorous approach and close collaboration.”
Victor Zhang (pictured), CEO, Huawei UK commented: “We are very proud to have been involved in the first year of the BFSF with BT and are delighted to have won this award. Sustainability, efficiency and reduction of carbon emissions are vital standards by which we measure ourselves, so to be recognised by such an important customer as BT is a very powerful endorsement of our efforts.”
The Better Future Supplier Forum is a collaborative learning and development forum set up to identify, collect, disseminate and implement best practice on sustainability. This involves a process which assesses suppliers against best practice, educates and trains them in sustainability principles and motivates practical implementation. BT announced that the achievements of the BFSF so far include savings of over 7,166 tonnes of CO2 from across the manufacturing process; the reduction of product CO2 footprint of over 23,071 tonnes; savings of over 102,000 m3 of water from manufacturing sites involved in producing BT products; and the reduction of around 15 per cent of solid waste production across manufacturing processes.