AT&T's New Interactive Sustainability Report is Promising But ... http://www.triplepundit.com/2012/06/atts-new-interactive-sustai...

AT&T’s Use of Interactivity is

Promising But Not Flawless
by Raz Godelnik (http://www.triplepundit.com/author/raz-godelnik/) on Thursday, Jun 21st,
2012

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While the outcome statement of Rio+20

(http://www.uncsd2012.org/content/documents
/727The%20Future%20We%20Want%2019%20June%201230pm.pdf) calls to
promote corporate sustainability reporting measures (para. 47), some companies
already take steps to promote reporting in various ways. Some are more focused on
integrated reporting (../2012/03/philips-2011-report-great-example-business-
case-sustainability/), while others look for ways to make the report more user-friendly
and interactive (../2011/08/timberland-setting-new-bar-csr-portal/).

The latest example of the latter is AT&T’s (../topic/att/) interactive 2011 report
(http://www.att.com/gen/landing-pages?pid=22872), which enables visitors to explore
an interactive pathway that is populated by narratives showcasing the sustainability
e!orts and progress of the company.

The report is very visual and is "lled with data, stories and video clips. It is certainly an
impressive e!ort to create a platform that is far from the regular concept of a CSR
report, which is a long PDF "lled mainly with text. The interesting question, though, is
if the new format can really meet the company’s ambitious goal of “empowering
consumers to engage, share, and even generate a donation to a community-improving
nonpro"t of their choice.”

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Before diving into the format, let’s take a look "rst at some of the highlights of the
report:

The company reported $42 million dollars in annualized energy savings through
more than 4,500 energy e#ciency projects.

AT&T (http://www.att.com/) met its four-year $100 million commitment to AT&T

Aspire, the largest education initiative in the company’s history. The program is
speci"cally focused on high school retention and workforce readiness. It
supported more than 1,000 national and community organizations, impacted
more than one million students and established the groundwork for an expanded
$250 million commitment planned over "ve years, announced in 2012.

The company is beginning the transition of AT&T-branded accessory packaging to

a plastic comprised of up to 30 percent plant-based materials.

It collected about 3.0 million cell phones for reuse or recycling.

Through AT&T’s own use of “travel replacement” technology, logging more than
2.9 million Telepresence minutes, realizing almost $13.9 million in travel dollars
saved and more than 8,261 metric tons of CO2 emissions averted.

Connect For Good Community: In 2011, AT&T launched the "rst-ever corporate
Causes.com community, Connect For Good. Since its launch, the AT&T Connect
For Good Community has donated more than $239,000 for charities.

While AT&T has CSR achievements it can be proud of, there’s no doubt that the new
format is the jewel of the crown in this report. It provides the reader with a pathway of
16 steps, where each step is dedicated to a di!erent topic. The "rst one is ‘promoting
safety with AT&T smart controls,’ followed by ‘AT&T Aspire — its signature education
initiative’, ‘AT&T mHealth platform’ and so on. Each of the topics includes a menu on
the right side with links to further information on subtopics. For those who want to
learn more on these issues there are PDFs and links to related webpages on AT&T’s
website.

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The report’s pathway de"nitely provides a visual and user-friendly experience and
unlike many other CSR reports, it’s far from being dull. It even provides readers with
the opportunity to answer questions about the data in the report and by answering,
they can choose one of three Causes.com (http://www.causes.com/) charities and
AT&T will then make a donation on their behalf to the chosen organization.

At the same time, the interactive report still lacks couple of important elements. First,
there’s no map so, for example, if you’re interested in learning about AT&T’s waste
management, you’ll need either to go through almost all the steps to "gure out that
the information can be found in step #15 or just to guess and try your luck clicking
randomly on the steps. Even a$er going through all the steps, if you have a bad
memory and you don’t remember on which step each topic is, you will "nd yourself
spending a lot of time searching for it. In addition, short-span readers who just want
some highlights will need to go to the sustainability report website
(http://www.att.com/gen/landing-pages?pid=7735), which is sort of a complementary
platform to the interactive report, o!ering brief highlights on environment, people and
community and technology.

The report also lacks interactivity in terms of receiving feedback from its readers, as
there’s no place for comments or engaging in discussion with AT&T or other
stakeholders. Finally, it does seem that consumers will have hard time learning about
the report if they just visit AT&T’s homepage. You can’t "nd even a small link to the
sustainability report page there. Now, this is not unique to AT&T, and unfortunately
most companies have a similar problem. Yet, when a company like AT&T announces it
wants to empower consumers “to live more sustainable lives,” doesn’t it make sense to
make the report not just interactive, but also visible?

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In any case, the new platform is welcome progress. If AT&T will "nd ways to make it a
bit easier to navigate and enhance its visibility, it can eventually become an example
for companies to seriously consider when they prepare their sustainability reports.

Raz Godelnik is the co-founder of Eco-Libris (http://ecolibris.blogspot.com/), a green

company working to green up the book industry in the digital age. He is an adjunct faculty
at the University of Delaware’s Business School, CUNY and the New School, teaching
courses in green business and new product development.

Raz Godelnik Raz Godelnik is an Assistant Professor and the Co-Director of the MS
in Strategic Design & Management program at Parsons School of
Design in New York. Currently, his research projects focus on the
impact of the sharing economy on traditional business, the sharing
economy and cities’ resilience, the future of design thinking, and the
integration of sustainability into Millennials’ lifestyles. Raz is the
co-founder of two green startups – Hemper Jeans and Eco-Libris and holds an MBA from Tel
Aviv University.

FOLLOW RAZ GODELNIK @GODELNIK (HTTP://TWITTER.COM/GODELNIK)

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