Our 2023 Sustainability Report highlights: CEO welcome letter
In 2023, we launched our People Planet Progress strategy, uniting our commitments and priorities to be an inclusive, sustainable and responsible company. We bring our purpose-driven mindset and track record of innovation to focus on the matters that impact today and shape the opportunities of our future. We strive to grow for good.
Our People are the heart of our business. Throughout 2023, our Belonging strategy continued to strengthen our culture of diversity and inclusion, where people can feel free to speak up, think out loud, and are empowered to contribute. We established a Youth Council to enhance the voices and priorities of our younger generations and continued to track strongly toward our gender diversity ambition to reach 45% women representation.
We are committed to supporting equitable access to the digital world. Today, 33% of the global population remains offline, and the proliferation of AI is predicted to widen the gap for communities lagging digital opportunities. To date, we have connected over 225,000 customers with affordable digital access and our joint ventures have reached nearly 2 million people through online education programs and partnerships.
In 2023, our employees volunteered a record number of hours, contributing to a combined $5.5 million of in-kind donations, cash contributions and volunteer work provided to our communities and partner charities.
Our commitment to our Planet also underlies our priority to ensure a future of opportunity and vitality for upcoming generations. In addition to reducing our reported carbon emissions in 2023, we continued to make our products and services more sustainable and energy efficient. Our newest consumer devices are made from 100% recycled materials, while we refurbished more than 630,000 older devices for second life. Our focus on renewable energy and ensuring a greener fleet continued to progress, and we are seeing AI solutions bring a potential of more than 10% energy consumption savings across our networks today.
We work to ensure the Progress of our strategy and efforts is credible and transparent, and that we are a trusted partner. Last year, we joined the UN Global Compact, the Joint Alliance for CSR, and the Sustainable Markets Initiative, to help amplify our commitments and the impact we are able to make on the issues that matter to society, our communities, and our environment.
I would like to thank our dedicated businesses and partners for a rewarding first year.
