Recycled ONU Promoting Reduction of Plastics from Telecommunications Equipment to Help "Build a Society that Coexists with the Environment"
As "a company that contributes to solving social issues," NTT West Group contributes to building a society that can coexist with the environment by striving to reduce the burden it imposes on the environment as a result of its business activities, while at the same time addressing global environmental problems through the ICT services it offers.
Plastics that have been released into nature do not decompose easily, and in most cases will remain for more than a few hundred years before turning into fine microplastics. If zooplankton mistakes such microplastics as phytoplankton and feeds on them, and the zooplankton is being consumed by fishes, which in turn become the prey of large marine animals such as sharks and whales, pollution caused by microplastics may spread to the entire marine life as a result.
To help alleviate such a situation, NTT West Group is currently making use of cleaned and inspected "reused items" for some of the devices such as ONU and HGW which are rented to and installed at our customers' homes. Also, to address the issue of plastics and promote effective utilization of resources, we are devoting efforts to reduce the use of plastic bags for packing the main units and accessories. In addition, for the wall-mounting screws that come packed in plastic bags with ONU and other equipment, many of the customers returned them in the unused state as most of the wall-mounted products such as commercial wireless routers are to be prepared by themselves, and thus we have cut down on the number of screws.
This was made possible through our effort to conduct several rounds of review on the boxes for individual packaging with the cleaning service providers and companies producing the boxes to ensure sufficient dust resistance during storage and impact resistance during shipping. As the same time, we also strived to further downsize the boxes to help reduce the amount of paper used as well as the costs for transportation and storage.
Going forward, we aim to widen the scope to include other items and continue to explore how we can lighten the burden on the environment through further reduction of single-use plastics.
