M1 strives to conduct our business operations efficiently, to minimise our environmental impact and usage of limited resources. We are committed to adhering to all applicable environmental regulations, and have never been fined or otherwise penalised for environment-related violations.

Our Environmental Footprint

M1’s mobile networks, office buildings and data centre operations used 54,740,425 kWh of electrical power in 2013. This was 6.2% higher than the 51,546,565 kWh used in 2012, due to growth in business operations and to support 100 additional base station sites.

In 2013, our overall vehicle fleet fuel consumption declined by 7.1% to 34,626 litres of petrol and diesel, compared to the year before. Segmentally, diesel consumption by our 12 diesel vehicles decreased 15.9% to 19,671 litres, and consumption for our nine petrol vehicles increased 7.5% to 14,955 litres.

Diesel is also used by our offshore base stations located on the islands of Pulau Satumu, Pulau Tekong and St. John’s Island, to power on-site generators as those sites are not connected to Singapore’s power grid. The diesel consumption at our three offshore base stations was 67,936 litres in 2013. This was 11.1% lower compared to 2012, primarily due to reduced diesel usage at Pulau Satumu following the installation of solar panels to enable the use of renewable energy.

Water consumption in 2013 was 54,974 m³, and this was 4.7% higher compared to 52,500 m³ in 2012. The water, which comes from the utilities company, is primarily used for drinking, cleaning and equipment cooling. The increase in usage was mainly for the construction of our new building extension at MiWorld building.

Our Conservations Efforts

Several initiatives were launched during the year to reinforce our conservation efforts.

As part of the revamp of our M1 Shop retail outlets, we have done away with print brochures. The sales transaction process has also become fully electronic and paperless, but with an option for a paper printout if customers require so. Three M1 Shop outlets, located at Change Alley, Suntec City and NEX, were revamped in 2013, and we plan to convert all remaining outlets to the new environmentally-friendly paperless concept by 2014.

M1 also worked with industry peers to organise Singapore’s first telecommunications sector environmental collaboration, in support of the World Wildlife Fund’s Earth Hour Challenge 2013. As part of this initiative, we invited our customers to decline plastic bags at our outlets over a one-week period and our staff volunteers cleaned up a stretch of East Coast Beach. In addition, M1 has since replaced all plastic bags at our retail shop outlets with fabric ones made from recycled materials.

As part of our continued efforts to optimise our lighting fixtures, we are currently replacing all fluorescent lights at our office buildings in Jurong and Aljunied with energy-efficient light-emitting diode (LED) lights. A partial replacement exercise saw 550 lights replaced in 2013, and we expect to replace all remaining 3,800 fluorescent lights by the second quarter of 2014.

Together with the 2,300 fluorescent lights that were replaced with LED lights at our MiWorld building in 2012, the whole lighting optimisation exercise will enable M1 to reduce our power consumption for lighting by an estimated 450,000 kWh every year.

Last year, we began construction of a new building extension, sited next to our MiWorld building. Scheduled to be completed in the second quarter of 2014, the new building extension will incorporate environmentally-friendly features, such as LED lighting, rainwater harvesting tanks, as well as bicycle lots and shower facilities to encourage employees to cycle to work.

Following the successful installation of solar panels at our Raffles Lighthouse base station on Pulau Satumu in 2012, we conducted a review of our other offshore sites to evaluate the feasibility of switching to renewable energy. We have since begun the process of installing solar panels at St. John’s Island. When completed in the third quarter of this year, these panels will enable a 45% reduction of diesel consumption of our St. John’s Island base station.

Our 2G base station modernisation programme to replace 1,200 base stations with multi-radio ones that do not require air-conditioning was completed in 2011 and continues to yield power savings of 6,876,600 kWh a year.