North American Communications Excellence Initiative (CEEI)

The Communications Excellence Initiative (CEEI) is a voluntary effort of the North American telecommunications industry to conduct a dialogue on environmental management principles and to define a path of continuous environmental improvement. The industry also hopes to explore the ways in which telecommunications technology might reduce negative environmental impacts. Current members of CEEI are: Bell Canada, BellSouth, TELUS, Telebec, Verizon, and Nortel Networks. (Additional Charter signatories include Ameritech, AT&T, and U S WEST.) Some of the initiative’s accomplishments include:

• Historic collaborative dialogue between environmental community and telecommunications industry in San Diego, 1997

• Development and publication of an "Environmental Charter for the North American Telecommunications Industry" acknowledged in a signing ceremony held at UN headquarters in New York City in 1999

• Creation of an initiative web site: www.ceei.org

• Presentation of industry progress to the United Nations Environment Programme’s "Governing Board" in Nairobi, Kenya in 1999. (Note: This presentation led to the organization, by the UN, of a global telecommunications initiative, now known as the Global Telecommunications Sustainability Initiative)

• Identification of industry-specific environmental "indicators" to be used as a basis for data collection to describe industry-wide environmental performance over time

• Development of a supplier questionnaire to communicate telecommunications company priorities to their supply chain – and to be used by telco purchasing agents to evaluate suppliers against specific environmental criteria

• NEW!! Completion of the North American telecommunications industry’s first industry-wide environmental report – based on Year 2000 aggregated data. Click here to view the report using Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Current projects and activities include the following:

• Research on the issue of product and infrastructure "take back" – as a basis for possible CEEI demonstration project or industry-wide initiative

• Collaboration with the US Environmental Protection Agency on developing Energy Star specifications for telephony products (cordless phones and answering machines)