The +U code has been released open-source, which means any organisation can take the code to repurpose it and adapt it for their own use. YouthNet, who runs the UK’s national volunteering database, is already piloting the application in the UK.

To get you inspired in repurposing the code for your favourite charity, we’ve also created a guide on how to run collaborative development days to get volunteers helping you adapt the code to fit your needs. We hope this is just the beginning for +U.

+U is great proof point of what collaborative innovation is all about. It was the final concept to come out from a joint Sony and WWF crowdsourcing initiative called Open Planet Ideas. You can see the story behind the initiative in the video above.

So if you’re involved in a charity organisation and you are looking for a way to reach out to more volunteers, make sure that people can easily find you by utilizing the +U application!

For those of you who are looking to use this application to find volunteering opportunities please be aware that at the moment it is only available in the UK. By raising the awareness of this unique open-source application, we are however hoping to make this available in more countries soon as more organizations start to use it.

We work hard to use recycled plastics and waterborne paint in as many of our smartphones as possible. Recycled plastics helps to reduce the use of oil based virgin plastics and waterborne paint lowers emissions of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC) compared to solvent-borne paints. Xperia™ P, Xperia™ U and Xperia™ sola are examples of phones that contain recycled plastics and waterborne paint.

From the beginning of 2011, our new headsets use recycled plastics and our new standard chargers have a no-load power consumption of ≤ 30 mW which means lower power consumption. Minimised packaging allows us to send more phones within each shipment which cuts down greenhouse gas emissions from transportation. To save natural resources we have also decided not to provide extended paper manuals and CDs with our phones. Instead they are accessible via the phone.

For more information on our GreenHeart™ ambition please visit www.sonymobile.com/greenheart

Click on the link to have a look:
http://dl-www.sonyericsson.com/cws/download/1/105/200/4/1329205969/SustainabilityReport2011.pdf

This report highlights what Sony Ericsson has accomplished in the field of Sustainability in 2011 as well as the importance of working with the different fields of Sustainability. This is Sony Ericsson’s last Sustainability report as a separate company. As we become part of Sony, we will be integrated in Sony’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Report and together we will continue to work towards reducing the impact of products on the environment. The integration with Sony enables us to join forces and combine our strengths to create new initiatives in the area of sustainability.

We hope you enjoy reading the report! Let us know in the comment section if you have any feed-back, comments or questions. We are looking forward to hearing from you!
/The Corporate Sustainability Office

Recognized by UNEP for our tools to control and track substances and materials in all products, Sony Ericsson was invited to speak at the side event. The aim of our presentation was to share our experiences working with chemicals in products in our industry. It addressed how we work with our suppliers and the communication channels we use with them.

It was very exciting for us to be able to present and participate in the SAICM side event (way more exciting than the picture shows). Our hope is that by participating in these sorts of events we can inspire people not only in the industry sector but other stakeholders as well to work more actively with keeping the chemicals in check and phasing out critical substances.

*SAICM was developed by a multi-stakeholder and multi-sectoral Preparatory Committee. It supports the achievement of the goal agreed at the 2002 Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development of ensuring that, by the year 2020, chemicals are produced and used in ways that minimize significant adverse impacts on the environment and human health.

In this edition, Greenpeace has changed the scoring system, introduced tougher requirements and updated many criteria. New criteria were also added, raising the bar for the manufacturers. Overall, the new ranking has stronger focus on energy and climate issues.

We welcome the Greenpeace ranking and appreciate the feedback on our sustainability work as it highlights our strengths and room for improvements. We are one of the top scorers in the products category, where we received maximum scores on energy efficiency of our phones and for our advice to users to increase efficiency. We also scored high on avoidance of hazardous substances. Areas were we need to improve according to the report are amongst others renewable energy, greenhouse gas emission reduction targets, utilization of post-consumer recycled plastics and information about recycling. Going forward we will work even harder, not only in the identified, but in all areas of sustainability. We welcome your feed-back and comments on the report and our sustainability work.

For the full Greenpeace Guide to Greener Electronics report, please follow this link: http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/campaigns/toxics/electronics/Guide-to-Greener-Electronics/

At 9 o’clock in the morning on the day of the Marathon, the ten students and Sony Ericsson employees including Magnus Ahlqvist, President of Sony Ericsson Greater China, set off in the race. Many Sony Ericsson employees had gathered to cheer for the runners and held up banners for them on both sides of the road.

We would like to congratulate all of the students and the Sony Ericsson employees who participated in the race on finishing their target routes successfully. And we would also like to thank all of the people who helped them to do so by cheering them on.

For their Beijing visit, the students were invited to stay with Sony Ericsson employees to experience ‘city life’. Organized visits to some of the key sights in Beijing were also arranged. To promote the importance of education, the students visited Beijing University and Tsinghua University. They also visited the Tiananmen Square to watch the flag-raising ceremony.

In the past several years, Sony Ericsson has worked to promote the development of charity in China. Going forward, Sony Ericsson will continue this work through various activities, always with the special Sony Ericsson touch: Innovative and energetic!

As you may know, Sony Ericsson is involved in the development of education in China through the Hope School project.  In 2009 and 2010, Sony Ericsson funded the building of two Hope Primary Schools, one in the Sichuan Province and one in the Shanxi Province. In 2011, we continue to support the Hope School project by funding another Hope School! This time in the Hebei Province.

Recently Magnus Ahlqvist, the President of Sony Ericsson China, visited the Chan Lin Township Primary School in Cang Xi County in the Sichuan Province for a donation ceremony. During this event Magnus presented the students with invitation letters to come to Beijing and participate in the 31^st Beijing Marathon, which will be held on October 16th 2011. In total, 10 students from the Sony Ericsson Hope Schools in Sichuan/Shanxi/Qinghai Province will participate by running a mini marathon. Magnus and a few other members of the Sony Ericsson China management team will also participate in the race and run together with the students. We wish the students and the Sony Ericsson China management team all the best in the Marathon!

To read more about the project please visit: http://microsites.realbuzz.com/charity_pages/beijing/china-youth-development-foundation/en/

In our recently published Sony Ericsson 2010 Sustainability Report you can find out more about what we are doing to lower carbon emissions, drive forward GreenHeart™ and improve our supply chain CSR.

Click on the link to have a look:
http://www.sonyericsson.com/cws/download/1/102/495/1/1314689687/SustainabilityReport2010.pdf

The report details Sony Ericsson’s corporate vision on sustainability and covers the company’s activities in three distinct dimensions: Corporate (economic), Planet (environmental) and People (society). We are proud to be able to say that Sony Ericsson continues to be an industry leader in the sustainability space and we are committed to take these efforts further in 2011 and throughout our Xperia portfolio.

We hope you enjoy reading the report! And if you have any comments or questions, please let us know in the comment section.

/The Corporate Sustainability Office

We are proud to tell you that Sony Ericsson won in the Best cross-organisation sustainability effort category for our GreenHeart initiative! Especially since it is such a cross organisational effort behind the products. All the small steps intergrated across the portfolio makes a much bigger difference than a single feature in a niche product that very few people are interested in.

We were commended for our drive to eliminate paper phone manuals, significantly reduce packaging, phase out hazardous substances in our products and recycle phones to recover valuable resources all as part of the initiative.

GreenHeart has had a tremendous year. In addition to this award, we have also been recognised in the GreenPeace Guide to Greener Electronics, and topped the O2 Eco Ratings with the Sony Ericsson Elm™ being named as the most sustainable handset. We know we are on the right track and now more and more people outside our organization also learn about it. We hope to continue the momentum into 2011 and beyond!

The new method for inclusion of substances is a step forward because from now it is stated that considerations also shall include the waste and end-of-life phase.

According to a recent statement from 150 scientists BFR and PVC produce hazardous dioxins and furans when they are incinerated at insufficiently high temperatures e.g. in sub standard recycling conditions. This was also one of the reasons for us to start the now concluded phase out of BFR and PVC from our products.

As far as I can understand this will inevitably will lead to inclusion of BFR and PVC into restrictions under RoHS the question is only when…..