AT&T took to its official Newsroom blog today to recommit itself to more environmentally friendly operations with a new goal to have at least 100 of its facilities achieving “Zero Waste” status by the end of 2020. That, of course, includes its Dallas-based global headquarters. The end-point the company has in mind includes having no fewer than 90-percent of the company’s waste diverted away from landfills. A substantial portion of those efforts, AT&T says, will be centered around overall reductions in the amount of waste generated, in addition to more recycling and composting.
The new goal is part of the larger aims of the second largest carrier in the U.S., in terms of going green. Beyond even that, the carrier has begun enabling a significant number of its network operations via IoT technologies to gain further insights into its emissions and those of its customers. More directly, the latter of those are directed towards enterprise customers and helping those reduce their own emissions. AT&T cites the use of its IoT network in farm equipment and city infrastructure, with regard to those. However, it also applies to its own network and fleet in everything ranging from infrastructure to trucks. Alongside its claims to be among the largest corporate-level purchases of renewable energy in the country, the service provider also plans to bolster its carbon savings up to 10-times the total footprint of its operations by 2025.
It goes without saying that it remains to be seen whether any of those goals is ultimately achievable. AT&T is not the only technology company to have set similar standards expectations and those have, even for company’s as big or profitable as Google, proven difficult to meet. Bearing that in mind, it may be possible to predict where efforts in waste management might be improved for AT&T, aside from the company’s mention of increased composting efforts. The above-mentioned search giant has, for example, undertaken substantial measures to ensure that water-waste is kept down. It’s also implemented energy capture technologies and even incorporated A.I. into its data centers to reduce cooling requirements. AT&T hasn’t outlined any specifics, for its part, but those seem like likely enough starting points.