New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection Recognizes Verizon With Department's 2011 Recycling Award

NEPTUNE, N.J., Oct. 20, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection announced on Thursday (Oct. 20) that Verizon is the recipient of the department's 2011 Recycling Award for its efforts to promote recycling in the company and within the communities it serves.

Verizon received the award at the Association of New Jersey Recyclers 31st annual Recycling Symposium and Awards Luncheon at the Jumping Brook Country Club in Neptune.  

"At Verizon, our goal is to conduct our business in an environmentally responsible way and to educate our employees about how they can protect the environment and the communities that we serve," said Jim Gowen, Verizon's chief sustainability officer.  "We are proud to be recognized for our recycling efforts, and we hope to set an example for other businesses on what they can do to implement their own sustainability initiatives."

Verizon's recycling program has grown significantly over the years.  During 2010, the company recycled more than 50.6 million pounds of paper and cardboard.  Verizon has examined ways to reduce cardboard and paper use, such as using reusable totes, using paper and boxes with higher recycled content and partnering with key suppliers to reduce the environmental impact of their products

The company has a "green team" of more than 5,500 employees corporatewide involved with sustainability initiatives and has conducted electronics recycling events at Verizon locations across the country, offering free recycling of old electronics for the community, including an event in May at Verizon's corporate center in Basking Ridge.  To date, more than 250,000 pounds of electronics have been collected from the events.

Earlier this year, Verizon's sustainability team developed a new carbon-intensity metric to measure carbon efficiency, enabling the company to accurately quantify, for the first time, the impact of all its green initiatives. The metric shows how much CO2 emissions result from moving a single terabyte of information across Verizon's network. Using this metric, Verizon improved its carbon efficiency by 15 percent in 2010 versus 2009 and is committed to improving by an additional 15 percent in 2011.

In the last year, Verizon also:

• Deployed an additional 1,642 alternative-fuel vehicles, moving closer to Verizon's goal of making such vehicles 15 percent of the company's fleet by 2015.
• Teamed with Cisco and Motorola to introduce four ENERGY STAR-certified set-top boxes for Verizon's FiOS TV customers.
• Launched three green mobile devices – including the world's first certified carbon-free smartphone, the Motorola CITRUS.

Next month, Verizon is planning nearly 20 events across the country to celebrate America Recycles Day on Nov. 15.

For more information about Verizon's recycling efforts and other corporate green initiatives, visit www.verizon.com/sustainability.

Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE, NASDAQ: VZ), headquartered in New York, is a global leader in delivering broadband and other wireless and wireline communications services to consumer, business, government and wholesale customers.  Verizon Wireless operates America's most reliable wireless network, with more than 106 million total connections nationwide.  Verizon also provides converged communications, information and entertainment services over America's most advanced fiber-optic network, and delivers integrated business solutions to customers in more than 150 countries, including all of the Fortune 500.  A Dow 30 company, Verizon employs a diverse workforce of nearly 196,000 and last year generated consolidated revenues of $106.6 billion.  For more information, visit www.verizon.com.

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SOURCE Verizon