Environment

All businesses have an impact on the environment. Arqiva operates over 8,000 sites around the UK and we are conscious of the importance of behaving responsibly, particularly as many of these sites are in rural locations.

We adhere closely to the requirements laid down by the Woodland Trust and the Butterfly Conservation Agency as regards the maintenance of relevant sites so that they remain areas where the natural inhabitants can flourish.

At our major sites we pride ourselves on our close relationships with our immediate neighbours. Our philosophy is to support our local communities by addressing any concerns they may have and helping as much as we can with local initiatives.

Electricity accounts for the majority of Arqiva's energy consumption and considerable reductions are being achieved as the digital TV switchover programme activity progresses. This is likely to reduce electricity consumption by approximately 10% compared to our financial year 2010/11, through upgrading and modernising transmission equipment. Between 2009/10 and 2010/11 electricity consumption across Arqiva’s portfolio was reduced by 8% and carbon emissions by some 15,722 tonnes.

A number of renewable energy opportunities are being investigated, with Solar PV currently in the pilot phase. Solar PV has been successfully installed at our head office in Winchester, delivering a peak output of 127kW. The pilot phase will continue on a further 12 sites across England & Wales during 2011. A larger roll-out project with a generation scale of around 2MW is also being considered to further mitigate another 1,460 tonnes of carbon emissions.

In a further initiative Arqiva is working in partnership with Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust and the Instituto de Pesquisas Ecológicas (Institute for Ecological Research (IPE)) in Brazil to plant environmentally important tree corridors in Brazil’s endangered Atlantic rainforest. Arqiva’s ongoing pledge has already contributed over 110,000 trees along with IT and satellite communications equipment for vital field research.

In terms of waste disposal, Arqiva ensures that all waste across the company is handled consistently and in an environmentally responsible way. It is Arqiva’s policy to follow the waste hierarchy:

• Minimise waste produced
• Reuse any redundant items
• Recycle waste
• Dispose, as the last resort