Diving Into Vivo's Sustainability Achievements & Commitments

vivo is a technology company that creates great products based on a design-driven value, with smart devices and intelligent services as its core. The company aims to build a bridge between humans and the digital world. Through unique creativity, vivo provides users with an increasingly convenient mobile and digital life.

Following the company's core values, which include Benfen, emphasizing "doing the right things and doing things right", user orientation, design-driven value, continuous learning, and team spirit, vivo has implemented a sustainable development strategy with the vision of developing into a healthier, more sustainable world-class corporation.

Recently, vivo released its first 2021 Sustainable Development Report, which focuses on four major aspects: the sharing of science and technology, green symbiosis, value creation, and social benefit. In this report, it is stated that vivo adheres to the sustainability vision of "Healthier and More Sustainable", and is committed to creating great products for users and collaborating with relevant parties to build a healthier and longer-lasting sustainability ecosystem.

Now let's dive into the company's sustainability strategy and achievements!

Green Symbiosis

Eco-Friendly Products

As an exemplification of vivo's commitment to engineering eco-friendlier products, the company set up a professional team on product sustainability under the organizational structure of the CSR Committee to reflect on the design and innovation of the products in the aspects of circular economy and LCA (Life Cycle Assessment), propose short, medium and long-term product sustainability plans, experiment with designated product series, and then gradually extend the progress to all product series.

On top of ensuring the reliable performance of product software and hardware, vivo teams integrate the concept of eco-friendliness into the front-end design, and fully consider the eco-friendly attributes throughout the life cycle, including ease of disassembly, recyclability, maintainability, and reusability, etc. By virtue of the eco-design evaluation system, we evaluate the environmental load generated by the whole life cycle of the products, and try to reduce the environmental load of each product throughout the life cycle as much as possible.

For instance, vivo launched its first sustainable design guide, which includes seeking low-carbon product solutions, using materials with a higher recycling rate, enlarging take-back programs, etc.

Minimal Packaging to Return to the Essence of Products

The packaging volume of the V23's printed box is about 15% smaller compared with that of the V20. The packaging weight of each mobile phone is about 18g lighter. For every 10 million mobile phones, the reduction is equivalent to saving 180 tons of paper.

Sustainable Materials to Care for Nature

Vivo aims to use more sustainable and renewable materials in its design guide. As a result, the company is now working on increasing the usage of recycled fibers, sourcing more bio-based materials, and reducing plastic usage. Some highlights of their sustainability efforts on materials include:

About 50% of fiber materials in the packaging paper tray is sugar cane pulp, which is made from the bagasse discarded by sugar cane factories to realize waste utilization;

vivo developed bio-based plastic raw materials suitable for mobile phone structural parts with partners and uses bio-based plastic in more than 35 items of mobile phone appearance and internal structural parts;

Starting from 2022, vivo plans to gradually achieve zero-plastic packaging by adopting different alternative solutions.

Improving Product Energy Efficiency and Extending Service Life

Smartphones have become a necessity in people's daily lives. The energy consumption level and lifespan of smartphones during use are very important for reducing the energy resource consumption of the whole life cycle of mobile phones. vivo lessens the energy consumption and unnecessary environmental impacts of mobile phones by continuously improving the energy efficiency and service life of products.

Recycling box for waste batteries and electronic components｜©vivo

Besides, vivo also is making special improvements to screen cracks to extend product life. As a result, the failure rate of cracked display module screens is reduced by 70%, thus fully strengthening product durability. Moreover, vivo actively fulfills the Extended Producer Responsibility and is highly concerned with recycling and disposing of waste products. Over the years, vivo has achieved great results in measures such as the product trade-in activity, repairing and retaining broken parts at a favorable price, and recycling of broken parts in stores. The eco-friendly treatment specification of parts has been greatly improved, and the service life of parts and the ratio of recycling have been greatly elevated.

Sustainable supply chain

By formulating and implementing management rules such as the vivo's Supplier Code of Conduct , vivo's Principles of Responsible Procurement Red Lines , and Employees' Code of Business Conduct , vivo regulates the business practices of internal employees, and expands them to the entire supply chain.

vivo is also making efforts to assist suppliers in improving their sustainable development capacity, cultivate their sense of responsibility for the environment and society, and jointly enable a positive cooperative ecosystem.

Green Operations

Internally, vivo takes the initiative to practice clean production and builds a green manufacturing system as part of its commitment to minimizing the environmental impact of its business operations.

Energy Management

Increasing the use of clean energy and reducing fossil fuel consumption is critical to achieving carbon peaking and carbon neutrality. vivo has long been exploring and demonstrating the feasibility of installing distributed photovoltaics in different production and operation areas to capitalize on renewable energy and reduce carbon emissions in operations.

For instance, vivo replaced its commute bus with 80 electric buses to provide free commuter service to employees in various places, accounting for 82% of the total number of commuter buses. In 2021, the use of electric buses saved us 714 tons of diesel, equivalent to a reduction of 1,735.4 tCO2e. Besides, vivo also adopts a few energy-saving technological transformations to improve energy efficiency, which includes the optimization of the air conditioning system, frequency conversion control, and regulation of equipment, the application of cool storage technology, etc.

Waste Management

Guided by the 3R principle (Reduce, Reuse and Recycle), vivo is committed to reducing all types of waste generated. The company has formulated the Standards for Classification and Management of Wastes to strictly control the classification, transfer, and disposal of wastes. In 2021, the amount of hazardous waste2 generated in vivo was 44.49 tons, 100% of which was disposed of in compliance with regulations; the amount of non-hazardous waste generated3 was 19,393.20 tons, 100% of which was recycled.

Community Responsibility

Cultural inheritance and protection

In 2021, vivo strove to promote the inheritance and protection of traditional culture with technology by vivo X series, and launched the "Digital National Treasure Assistance Program", aiming to breathe new life into precious national treasures by digital means, enabling people to explore and feel the unique charm of Chinese culture through modern technology, so as to promote the digital process of historical relics.

The first stop of the "Digital National Treasure Assistance Program" is Sanxingdui Museum, which promotes the digital process of cultural relics by documentaries and the shooting of cultural relic samples under the dark light in the museum, continuously empowers Chinese traditional culture by professional imaging capacity, and boosts inheritance and protection of Chinese traditional culture.

In addition, vivo reproduced the national treasure painting The Vast Land by 100 million pixels, recorded the story of Suzhou embroidery craftspeople and the craftsman spirit by lens and carried forward precious traditional culture with vivo image technology. In the future, vivo will continue to work with more organizations to show the beauty of Chinese culture to the world through technology.

Employee participation in public welfare programs

In March 2021, vivo launched a public welfare activity for its global employees with "save 1 hour · light up a blue life-world" as the theme. In response to the call from headquarters, the lights were turned off in 11 office areas in 8 cities in China and 7 overseas office areas; employees completed the online steps donation target by 188% to light up the offline blue life world, which contributed vivo's power to action against climate change.

©vivo

Meanwhile, vivo collaborated with 11 charity photographers to publish 2 issues on biodiversity protection, collected 89 high-definition animal photos, popularized knowledge in 42 papers, and held public science popularization exhibitions in 11 offices. The activity brought together individuals and organizations to call on people to protect biodiversity, live in harmony with the nature, and feel and light up the beauty of the planet.

Collaboration with One Foundation

vivo has cooperated with One Foundation for seven years to fully support and actively participate in public welfare activities. vivo and One Foundation have passed assistance and warmth to children in difficulty for years, such as raising money for "Water Purification Program" in 2014.

Now vivo also teamed up with users to transform credit points into the value for good causes. For instance, in 2021, vivo launched v public welfare activity on vivo credit point mall. All vivo users can donate vivo credit points to the public welfare activity. The value behavior of users in the vivo ecosystem will eventually be transformed into contributions to the social responsibility. We kicked off public welfare projects including "Ocean Paradise", "Children Safety Training Camp", "Warm Package" and "Water Purification Program" in the first phase. So far, users have donated 77.90 million credit points cumulatively and multiple public welfare activities have taken place.

In less than ten years since it launched, China-based Vivo is quickly emerging as one of the top five smartphone brands. Now, under China's pledge to peak its carbon dioxide emissions before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060, it's great to see vivo implement sustainability strategies throughout the value chain and upholds the corporate mission of "create great products for users, create a joyful and progressive environment for employees, create win-win platforms for partners based on mutual trust, and render steady long term returns on investment for shareholders."

Integrating the notion of "Low Carbon Recycling" into every part of the full product life cycle, continuously reducing the environmental impact of products, and improving resource utilization, is definitely a great start. In terms of operations, we are looking forward to seeing the optimization of management, in order to promote green and low-carbon production and operation, as well as energy conservation and environment protection, reduce energy consumption and pollution emissions, and educate the company's own employees on climate change, thus ushering in a better green future!

Diving Into Vivo's Sustainability Achievements & Commitments

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