The electronic waste cycle: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
Cable One is committed to the reduction of waste generated by our business.
When it comes to the network equipment that enables our service in our customers’ homes, it’s a story of
“one product, many lives.”
Because we own much of the customer premise equipment in our network – the cable modems and
set-top boxes in our customers’ homes and businesses – we enhance the sustainability of our
operations through reuse and recycling. When equipment returned to us is in working order, we
refurbish it and redeploy it for reuse by other customers. When this equipment has reached the
end of its lifecycle with Cable One, we work with brokers who resell it to network operators,
often in developing countries. And if the equipment is damaged beyond repair, we may harvest it
for usable parts before sending it to partners that responsibly recycle it.
It is important for us to effectively manage our resources, achieve cost efficiencies, and
foster sustainability, and that is very much the case with hardware. One example relates to
office equipment. When its useful life at Cable One comes to an end, we seek to find it a new
home or have it ethically recycled. In 2019, we reduced solid waste by more than 40 tons by
working with a broker to find secondary market buyers for nearly 300 computers and by recycling
an additional 200 computers and 1,000 monitors. In 2020, despite the disruption caused by the
pandemic, we equaled 2019's figures, selling more than 300 computers on the used market and
exceeding 40 tons of solid waste reduction.
Another environmental commitment is to decrease paper usage throughout the company. Paper is a concern
for the environment, contributing to landfill, municipal, and business waste. A cornerstone of this
commitment is encouraging our customers to adopt paperless billing. Electronic bill presentation is
efficient and timely, allowing us to communicate directly with our customers. Further, paperless billing
streamlines the process and decreases recurring expenses associated with printing materials, postage,
and labor. Overall, it helps us reduce our carbon footprint.
The value of our paperless billing initiative is brought to life even more through our partnership with
the Arbor Day Foundation. To date, donations from Cable One are responsible for planting 100,000 trees,
and we’re committed to planting an additional 10,000 trees each year. These new trees help offset carbon
emissions while offering additional benefits, including cleaner air and water, soil stabilization and
wildlife habitat. The plantings are possible because of the thousands of customers who have switched to
paperless billing.
The impact of this effort is significant. Over their lifetime, 100,000 trees can absorb 8,000 tons of
carbon, the equivalent of taking 6,000 cars off the road for a year. Through increased paperless billing
adoption, we hope to further eliminate the use of millions of sheets of paper and envelopes per year.
Where we can’t eliminate paper and other single-use materials, we strongly promote recycling. Cable One
has a recycling program for all paper, cardboard, and aluminum cans used at our corporate office in
Phoenix. Every workstation has a recycling bin and there is signage throughout the offices that
reinforces our sustainability commitments.