One of the largest areas of environmental impact by mobile network operators occurs during the installation of base station sites, and the construction of network communication cables on land and under water. MTN ensures that environmental, health and safety matters are considered and addressed during the process of planning, installation, deployment and maintenance of business operations by conducting environmental impact assessments and environmental implementing policies and/ or management plans and mitigation where necessary.
The Group’s base station toolkit specifies approved and trial technologies with the aim of reducing total site costs, including building materials and equipment, services and energy requirements, and in turn the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions. Network infrastructure impacts addressed by environmental management systems include essential environmental processes and procedures to manage site construction and infrastructure implementation, waste minimization, prevention of pollution, and management of land, unique flora, forests, water and wildlife. Due to the complexity of site build projects, MTN’s project managers are required to ensure that contractors (especially new contractors and agents where appropriate) are trained on project specifics relating to environmental requirements during site preconstruction and construction phases. The Company’s submarine and terrestrial optic-fibre broadband implementations are also subject to independent environmental and local community impact assessments.
MTN constructs its infrastructure in a manner that will visually blend into the environment as much as possible, to address community concerns about the aesthetic aspects of towers located in areas where they live or work. In the case of broadband cabling, infrastructure development must be approved by local government and regulatory stakeholders, and MTN’s operating licenses and certain financial investment applications are subject to environmental impact assessment requirements. In some of the MTN’s countries of operation additional environmental certification standards have been voluntarily adopted.
MTN South Africa is ISO 14001 certified and maintains silver level Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) status.