Nokia Press Bulletin Board

At this week’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona Nokia is showcasing “Green Explorer”, a multi-channel service where people dedicated to a sustainable lifestyle can explore and enjoy the world. Through Green Explorer people can share information, give guidance and communicate about eco-friendly traveling. By signing up to the site you can share eco tips and photos, ask questions, add comments and rank destinations for a more enhanced and meaningful travel experience. In addition, map features include images to visualize destinations and Green Explorer points of interest. And you can take it all with you on your mobile device. 

The service has environmental information and eco tips from WWF covering 30 different countries plus eco travel information from Lonely Planet for almost 3000 locations worldwide. You can also select the most sustainable way to get to your destination based on mode of transport, cost, time to destinantion, and CO2 emissions. You can also look up eco city guides and subscribe to eco news from many cities around the world. 

“We have added lots of interesting new information and travel tools to the Green Explorer service, and it is great to see people using it to share tips and hints with others. Because Green Explorer is a mobile service people can take it with them on their travels and use it to make their trip fun and environmentally friendly.” says Minna Lindholm, Senior Environmental Manager. Green Explorer can be found at www.greenexplorer.nokia.com and is optimized for your mobile device.

Last week at Nokia World the beta version of a new sustainable travel planning service was introduced. Called GreenExplorer, it helps people make more sustainable travel decisions is available via your mobile device by simply downloading a widget or by going to www.greenexplorer.net

GreenExplorer provides information on a range of travel issues including tips on the most sustainable methods of transport, eco-friendly places to visit, and a way to offset the CO2 emissions from your trip if you have to fly. It is also a place for travellers to share advice on a range of issues: from the best travel routes to where to find organic food, or recommendations for the best eco-friendly hotels.

The service includes information on eco-tourism from travel specialists Lonely Planet and local environmental tips from WWF, and vistors will be able to share their own tips and eco-travel ideas. In comparison to any other sort of travel guide on the market, this offers people the freshest, most up-to-date information, accessible from a mobile device. It will help to enrich trips and at the same time lessen our impact on the earth.

“Because GreenExplorer is a mobile service you can take it with you on your trip, helping you to make informed decisions about your visit and share up to date tips and hints with fellow travellers. We hope this will give people who are interested in sustainable travel some new and fun travel ideas, and create a place where these can be shared” says Minna Lindholm, Senior Environmental Manager.

Nokia Malaysia’s “Integrated Nokia Kiosk” (INK) recently snagged the inaugural “Green Mobile Award” at the GSM Association’s (GSMA) Asia Mobile Awards 2008 held. The award recognizes initiatives in the region aimed at promoting low carbon economies and sustainable lifestyles.

 The INK is a first-of-its-kind kiosk that plays a double role: it provides customers a really simple way to recycle their old mobile phones and accessories, as well as get their current Nokia devices serviced. The initiative was launched in Malaysia earlier this year  with four kiosks placed in high-traffic shopping malls for a six-month pilot phase. As an added incentive for recycling, for each mobile phone dropped off, the customer will have a tree planted in his or her name via the Nokia NewTrees Program. This is a collaboration project with WWF Indonesia and Equinox Publishing whereby Nokia has committed funds towards planting of 100,000 trees in Sebangau National Park in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia). The customer then receives a unique URL and instructions to view their tree through Google Earth.  

“This award is a fantastic recognitionl Nokia’s ongoing commitment to the environment. Today, up to 80% of any Nokia device can be recycled, saving precious raw materials that can be used again. However, a recent study by Nokia earlier this year showed only 3% of people actually recycled their old mobile phones,” says Francis Cheong, Nokia’s Environmental Affairs Manager, South East Asia Pacific.  “INK is an innovative way we can make it easier for people to recycle their used and unwanted mobiles. Working together with consumers we can make a big difference for the environment” Francis continues.  

Since July, more than 1,200 cell-phones have been collected and recycled via the INK initiative.

Nokia won the Best Green Internal Communications category with the ‘Power of We’ campaign, and subsequently the overall Grand Prix award at the third annual Green Awards for Creativity and Sustainability. The Green Awards were established to emphasise the importance of informing people about green issues, products and lifestyle choices, and to recognize creative work that communicates the importance of Corporate Social Responsibility, sustainable development and ethical best practices.Nokia’s ‘Power of We’ was nominated for its internal communications campaign which encourages a wider discussion about environmental issues within the company. “We wanted to raise awareness around our environmental performance, also internally to encourage debate and discussion around our future targets, and to engage an increasing amount of our employees in environmental actions and practice in everything we do” says Kirsi Sormunen, VP of Environmental Affairs.

“To bring this approach to life, we created the concept called the Power of We which represents Nokia’s attitude towards environmental issues and brand approach. We believe in the power of the individuals together to make a real change and help the environment, starting from ourselves as employees of Nokia”, says Anastasia Orkina, Director of Environmental Marketing.The campaign set the target to inform at least 50% of Nokia’s global workforce about Nokia’s environmental programme, and to engage a minimum of 1,000 people as active environmental champions during its first year. As environmental issues at Nokia are imbedded in everything we do, five main pillars were created to illustrate the ‘Power of We’ in more concrete ways– we:evolve, we:create, we:energise, we:recycle, and we:support. In addition, Nokia’s internal environmental website was renewed to support the campaign and became the core communication hub surrounding Nokia’s internal discussion on environmental affairs.

The ‘Power of We’ campaign has had concrete impacts at Nokia as well. The recycling rate of used phones and accessories among Nokia employees has increased 600% compared to previous efforts. Over 1200 we:champions have signed up and helped organize local events/eco actions, and Nokia employees worldwide have already made 4000 eco-pledges on their own actions with the number growing each day.“This award is very encouraging for us as there is a strong commitment to continue building internal and external engagement around environmental issues - we are definitely on the right track now” says Anastasia. 

What happens to most mobile devices when people no longer use them? That was the question Nokia asked more than 6, 500 people in 13 countries around the world recently. The surprising results showed that most are stored away at home because very few of us don’t know that that they can be recycled or how to do this.  

The survey conducted in Finland, Germany, Italy, Russia, Sweden, UK, United Arab Emirates, USA, Nigeria, India, China, Indonesia and Brazil, found that only 3% of people recycle their mobile phones. Very few are being thrown away (4%) instead the majority (44%) are simply kept at home and never used.   

Globally, 74% of consumers said they don’t think about recycling their phones, despite the fact that around the same number, 72%, think recycling makes a difference to the environment. Nearly half of those surveyed added that they were unaware that it was even possible to recycle a mobile.  

The survey found that one of the main reasons why so few people recycle their mobile phones is because they simply don’t know that it is possible to do so. In fact, up to 80% of any Nokia device is recyclable and precious materials within it can be reused to help make new products such as kitchen kettles, park benches, dental fillings or even saxophones and other metal musical instruments.  

Mr Terho said, “Using the best recycling technology nothing is wasted. Between 65 – 80 per cent of a Nokia device can be recycled. Plastics that can’t be recycled are burnt to provide energy for the recycling process, and other materials are ground up into chips and used as construction materials or for building roads. In this way nothing has to go to landfill.”  

The results will help Nokia find out more about consumers’ attitudes and behaviors towards recycling, and inform the company’s take-back programs and efforts to increase recycling rates of unused mobile devices.

Markus Terho, Director of Environmental Affairs, Markets, at Nokia said, “If each of the three billion people globally owning mobiles brought back just one unused device we could save 240,000 tonnes of raw materials and reduce greenhouse gases to the same effect as taking 4 million cars off the road. By working together, small individual actions could add up to make a big difference.”

www.nokia.com/werecycle

Nokia’s advanced design team today shared “Homegrown”, a long term research project looking at how Nokia can help people make more sustainable choices. The team is exploring specific environmental and social issues including recycling, energy and how to make the benefits of mobile technology available to more people. 

The project is being run by the same team who created Remade – a concept first shown at the Mobile World Congress earlier this year and that explores how recycled materials may be used in the future to make mobile devices. At today’s event in Nokia’s London design studio the team showed for the first time some of the other concept they are working on. These are: 

Zero Waste Charger concept - this explores ways to reduce the energy that is wasted when chargers are unplugged from a mobile device but left plugged into a live mains socket.  

People First concept – this concept takes three human universals of the way people think about communication – time, lists, and people – to inspire and examine new user interface ideas.  

Wears in, not out concept – as more services become available on our mobile devices this concept explores how people could potentially upgrade their devices digitally rather than physically in the future, giving people an additional choice on how they use and update their mobile phones.  

The design team developing these concepts works on a time frame of looking three to five years out into the future. By sharing some of these ideas and stimulating a discussion they hope to develop innovative new ideas that can be used both within Nokia’s own business but also more broadly to drive environmental improvements.   

Photos of the concepts 

Video of the Remade concept

 Press materials and photos from the London event www.nokia.com/press

Nokia has joined IBM, Sony and Pitney Bowes in offering the rights to
environmentally friendly technologies for free.
Called the Eco-Patent Commons, this is a first-of-its-kind effort to
help the environment, making dozens of innovative, environmentally
responsible patents available free of charge.

Nokia has started by donating a patent in an area where there is a lot
of potential to innovate – recycling. The patent outlines how to re-use
the computing power from unwanted mobile phones and transform these
into other electronic items such as data monitoring devices, cameras or
other electronic items that do not have cellular capability.

Further information about the project can be found at World Business
Council for Sustainable Development website at this link
http://www.wbcsd.org/web/epc