Environment Environmentally friendly products & services 104 covered with living plants have been a firm feature of our interna- tional shop concept. As of the end of 2022, we have installed over 70 green walls in various shops around Europe, with more set to be put up in 2023. Our green walls are also marked with the #Green- Magenta label. In addition, we have introduced energy-saving screens, and have banned all single-use plastic from stores across Europe since 2020. For example, we have replaced all of the plas- tic cups for our coffee machines with more sustainable alterna- tives. In Austria alone, this policy is saving around 6 000 plastic cups per month. In Germany, shops have introduced bags made of recycled PET plastic. Five recycled PET bottles go into the making of each bag. Plus, we are reducing our paper consumption, and have already introduced paperless stores in Austria, Slovakia, and the Netherlands. We have cut our paper usage in Germany, Poland, and Hungary by 85 percent since 2021, achieved in part by opting not to offer printed brochures and flyers in our shops. Digital invoices and online payment methods are offered across the board at all national companies. In some shops in Europe, we offer what we call repair bars, where we repair or replace displays, rechargea- ble batteries and back covers of Apple, Samsung, and Huawei devices. Overall, we are aiming to apply sustainability criteria in the design and decor of our shops throughout Europe. At the beginning of 2021, we established a Europe-wide Green Point of Sale commu- nity to drive sustainability issues forward in regular virtual meet- ings. The topics included local green initiatives in the national companies, the visibility of our sustainability activities in the stores, and our sustainable cell-phone recycling scheme. The #GreenMa- genta initiative is already being promoted in over 80 percent of our shops in Germany and Austria, with stores in Hungary, the Czech Republic, Poland, and Croatia to follow in 2023. In 2023, we also aim to make the furniture inventory and design of our stores even more sustainable and to have our shop furniture manufactured using recycled wood. As with our shop design, we have also attached great importance to sustainability in the production of our company uniforms, not least in regard to the new uniform for Telekom Shop employees, released in January 2023. We set out to create more sustainable company uniforms for the 3 700 or so staff in our shops. Manufac- tured from organic wool and recycled polyester, most of these items have now been certified in accordance with the Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS). The GOTS defines internationally recognized requirements for organic textiles, from raw-material harvesting to environmentally-friendly and socially-responsible manufacture. Old company uniforms that are no longer required are recycled and turned into new items such as bags and hair bands. Ecologically sustainable products We are offering our customers more and more products and ser- vices that are sustainability oriented. The basis for them is Deutsche Telekom’s “green network”, which is 100 percent pow- ered by renewable energies. We use the #GoodMagenta and #GreenMagenta labels to highlight products and services that are especially sustainable. Also, in 2021, and in cooperation with other network operators, we introduced the Eco Rating labelling system, which we use to highlight cell phones that are eco-friendly. In 2022, we further expanded our range of eco-friendly products and services. Now, along with more eco-friendly models of routers, media receivers and phones (the Fairphone), we also offer more eco-friendly accessories. In addition, we offer sustainability-ori- ented services, such as rental plans, and refurbishment and recy- cling of smartphones and fixed-network devices. The first eco-friendly 5G smartphone In 2021, and in the framework of our cooperation with Fairphone, a manufacturer based in the Netherlands, we supported the launch of the first eco-friendly 5G smartphone, in Germany, Austria and the Netherlands. The phone in question, the Fairphone 4, is cur- rently the only smartphone to have received the German “Blue Angel” ecolabel. The phone has a modular design that is resource- efficient and reduces emissions. As of the year under review, our employees are free to order the new Fairphone as a workplace phone, since it has been certified in keeping with Google’s Android Enterprise Recommended (AER) initiative. By participating in this program, Fairphone is working to offer companies the best-possi- ble, most-secure devices for mobile work settings. To date, about 11 percent of our new trainees have opted for the Fairphone 4. Conserving resources by refurbishing smartphones In 2021, we added the cell-phone purchase, “ReUse MyMobile” and “Insure MyMobile” services to our portfolio of sustainable products and services. Under the cell-phone purchase scheme (only available in German), we buy used smartphones – including smartphones from both Deutsche Telekom and other providers. We provide guaranteed, certified erasure of all data. We refurbish, and make available for reuse, nearly all of the devices we purchase. And in our refurbishments, we try to avoid component replace- ments wherever possible. Instead of replacing defective compo- nents, we refurbish them with innovative procedures that minimize resources consumption. For example, we restore displays with a new, innovative deep-polish method that produces long-lasting results. Devices that simply cannot be reused are properly recy- cled. Prior to being sold, each refurbished device undergoes a total of 65 tests, covering the same functional standards that are applied to new devices. Then the devices are sustainably and securely packaged – and returned into circulation. We offer refurbished devices, along with a 24-month guarantee, for sale via our “ReUse MyMobile” (only available in German) ser- vice – and thereby extend the devices’ life cycles and help save resources. Our newly designed packaging, including the environ- mentally friendly labels and overprinting we use, is biodegradable. The inner packaging for our products is sealed and secure, with filmless, transparent viewing windows that make it easy for cus- tomers to inspect the products in our stores.