A Sustainable, Paper-less Future for Telecom: How Secure Digital Correspondence is Key to a Green Future

The telecom industry is a significant source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, accounting for approximately 3% to 4% of all CO₂ — twice that of the aviation sector.
Often, green initiatives can be derailed by global and operational pressures facing the business, be it R&D spending and rising inflation, network maintenance, supply chain issues or regulatory compliance.

The Sustainability ‘Slump’

Similarly, Boston Consulting Group (BCG)’s Telco Sustainability Index found that the industry’s progress on increasing sustainability had stalled.

“Telcos are facing a range of competing business and operations pressures. The global economy is mixed; interest rates, while falling, are still high; and data traffic transported by telcos continues to grow at double-digit rates. As a result, sustainability has lost ground among the issues that most concern telco CEOs,” reports BCG, noting that new opportunities are competing for funding and resources, such as generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI), where the business case for payoff could be speedier and more assured than sustainability gains.

However, telcos with strong sustainability metrics often can secure funding and marketing position, while not having a good sustainability track record can do the opposite. This urgency will heighten as 2030 approaches and the effects of global warming intensify.

Read also: How the Telecommunication Industry is Reinventing Their Business Model.

A Competitive Imperative

BCG predicts that as regulations tighten and investors and customers put more pressure on telcos, “telecom industry laggards (for sustainability) will find themselves as at a real competitive disadvantage in the next years.”

McKinsey notes that as the telco’s energy consumption expands, so will its carbon footprint, hurting not only the environment but also corporate reputation and standing.

That is particularly true as the global population ages and shifts to millennials and Gen-Z. Younger consumers and workers increasingly hold companies accountable for sustainability initiatives, both when deciding what brands matter to their pocketbook and where they want to work.

Companies can boost their efforts on waste management, among other measures, to improve their sustainability progress now.

As the climate crisis grows, telcos recognize the urgency to reduce their carbon footprints. Moving from paper-based correspondence to a digital-only platform is one way to contribute toward a greener path while achieving better operational efficiencies.

Shift to Digital

Paper drives many telcos, which produce a large volume of documents, contracts, customer correspondence and regulatory paperwork. Telecom operators also serve many customers and must maintain monthly correspondence for each, making storage another major challenge. Costs include not only physical storage but also the filing cabinets, paper itself, and labor for managing paper documents. Going paperless lets firms drastically reduce their storage space footprint, cut costs and be better stewards of the environment.

Creating a Sustainable, Profitable Future for Telcos

The World Economic Forum predicts that digital transformation could prevent around 26 billion metric tons of net carbon dioxide emissions from electricity, logistics and automotive between 2016 and 2025. The decrease in electricity consumption alone could create $418 billion of new value for the economy.

Telcos that embrace digital transformation can create new opportunities to drive growth while protecting the planet.

“Going paperless would reduce both their carbon footprint and telcos’ mail logistics by enabling a completely digital toolbox,” explains Cimber.

Sustainability solutions could empower telcos to align environmental responsibility with business objectives, just as government authorities have been able to improve efficiencies while contributing to a greener environment. In Norway, eliminating paper-based postage in favor of digital correspondence saved citizens EUR 37.2 million from sending out 40 million letters a year to Norwegian citizens. That’s the equivalent of daily emissions from 250,000 cars.

More about e-Boks

For 24 years, Denmark-based e-Boks has helped public authorities and businesses securely digitize citizen and customer correspondence, and in the process, be more sustainable. Featuring end-to-end encryption for document management from delivery and archiving to digital signing, e-Boks can greatly simplify telcos’ transition to a paperless environment.

Today, 30,000 public and private senders use the e-Boks platform globally, including the citizens receiving public sector mail in Denmark, Norway, Greenland and Ireland. Collectively, these national public authorities have saved tons of CO₂ emission from embracing digital correspondence.

“It has become an infrastructure we rely on just like power in the socket and water in the faucet,” says Professor Jan Damsgaard, professor at CBS, on the 10-year anniversary of the Danish government making digital correspondence mandatory for citizens receiving mail from the public sector.    

e-Boks’ sustainability commitment extends to its own energy consumption, given that the energy sector remains the largest source of CO₂ emissions. By 2030, the company intends to source 100% carbon-neutral data using wind turbines to power its data centers. It also plans to plant 120,000 trees.

Learn more here.