Virgin Media’s sustainability goals, one year on

• Increased percentage of women in senior roles to 32%, above European average 

• Significant reduction of carbon footprint and reduced truck journeys
• Launched a Technology Innovation Forum to find solutions to challenges disabled people face
• Launched the world’s first ever 360° sustainability video 

Virgin Media today announced the first year’s results of its ‘Five in Five’ sustainability goals – the company’s pledge to do more good with digital while growing the business responsibly and sustainably.  This will see Virgin Media deliver five key goals in five years (by 2020). 

The ultrafast broadband provider has also launched a new 360° immersive video. This is a world’s first for communicating sustainability and gives viewers the opportunity to meet some of the people behind our goals and jump into the future to see what we’re aiming to achieve by 2020.

Progress: In 2015 the percentage of women in senior roles increased to 32%, 2% more than in 2014. By 2018, Virgin Media aims to have 40% of senior roles occupied by women. Across the European telecoms industry, just 20% of top roles are held by women.

Progress: In 2015 Virgin Media reduced its absolute Scope 1 & 2 carbon footprint by 6.1%, its biggest reduction ever. The company achieved this through a wide-ranging programme of energy efficiency projects and a major reduction in truck journeys. Virgin Media has reduced truck journeys by more than 800,000, which equates to a reduction of over 2.3 million miles and is 300,000 journeys more than the original target for 2015. 

These efficiency projects have enabled Virgin Media to increase the amount of data on its network by 45% while reducing the CO2e per terabyte of data by 35%. 

Virgin Media was able to reduce its truck journeys as result of better route planning, increased fault diagnosis and an increase in ‘QuickStart’, which enables customers to self-install their services.

Progress: Virgin Media Pioneers is an online community dedicated to inspiring, supporting and celebrating small business founders and entrepreneurs. Last year, Virgin Media revamped its Pioneers website to provide advice from leading small business experts, driving an increase in Pioneers to 9,280, a 14% increase on the year before. Virgin Media also ran bespoke digital skills training for 80 Pioneers, sharing best business practice. 

The Company also ran the Virgin Media Accelerator powered by TechStars, a three month mentor-led accelerator programme for 10 innovative start-up companies.

Progress: Since launching its two year partnership with Scope in 2015, Virgin Media has raised more than £130,000 through employee fundraising, donated over 1,720 bags of stock to Scope charity shops and launched a Technology Innovation Forum to find innovative solutions to the challenges disabled people face. 

The Virgin Media funded  ‘Connect Families’ initiative is being piloted in three locations to help the parents of disabled children share their experiences and support one another, building on the excellent face-to-face service Scope already provides. 

The Company has also appointed nine employees as ‘Digital for Good Champions’ across the UK, with 25% of their time dedicated to supporting Scope.

Progress: Virgin Media created its first ever product scorecard to measure the environmental and social impacts of the Company’s products and ensure that sustainability criteria are incorporated into product design and development. Virgin Media will soon launch the scorecard results for its latest WiFi hub which will act as the baseline for future products that are tested with the product scorecard.

 

Brigitte Trafford, Chief Corporate Affairs Officer at Virgin Media, said: “In the past year, we’ve lowered our carbon footprint, supported small businesses and entrepreneurs, increased the number of women in senior roles and transformed the lives of disabled people with Scope. With our ‘five in five’ goals we’re now focused on doing more good with digital.” 

To find out more about this partnership and Virgin Media’s Digital for Good strategy, go to virginmedia.com/sustainability.


ENDS


About Virgin Media

Virgin Media offers four multi award-winning services across the UK and Ireland: broadband, TV, mobile phone and landline. 

The company’s dedicated, ultrafast network delivers the fastest widely available broadband speeds to homes and businesses. We’re expanding this through our £3bn Project Lightning programme, which will reach 17 million premises by the end of 2019. 

Our interactive TV service brings live programmes, thousands of hours of on-demand programming and the best apps and games in a set-top box, as well as on-the-go for tablets and smartphones. 

We launched the world’s first virtual mobile network, offering fantastic value and services. We are also one of the largest fixed-line home phone providers in the UK and Ireland. 

Through Virgin Media Business, we support entrepreneurs, businesses and the public sector, delivering the fastest speeds and tailor-made services. 

Virgin Media is part of Liberty Global, the world’s largest international cable company, with operations in more than 30 countries.