Good morning. My name is William Choi, and I'm from Telstra's Investor Relations team. On behalf of our sustainability and IR teams, welcome to Telstra's Sustainability Roundtable for 2020. Before we commence, on behalf of Telstra, I would like to acknowledge and pay my respects to the traditional custodians of country throughout Australia and recognize their continuing connection to land, waters, and culture. We pay our respects to their elders past, present, and emerging. Onto the agenda. We'll begin today's session with an overview of our sustainability strategy and key performance highlights for FY2020 with Jules Scarlett. We'll then provide a deep dive on three key sustainability topics.
Firstly, responsible business with Lyndall Stoyles, and then we'll take a short break, and when we return, Michael Park will take us through modern slavery. And finally, environment and climate change with Tom Penny.
There'll be time for Q&A following each of these presentations. You can ask questions at any time during the session by typing a question into the interaction zone below this screen. We'll try to answer as many questions as we can, but if your query isn't addressed, please email our IR team after this session. I'll then cover our planned sustainability engagement in 2021 before we close. With that, I'll now hand over to Jules to take you through sustainability at Telstra.
Thanks very much, Will. So this meeting is a really important milestone in our sustainability journey. Delivering on our responsibility to investors is something we take very seriously, and having the opportunity to provide an update on some of the key issues Telstra is facing into, as well as the opportunity to gain your perspective on any horizon issues to help inform our strategy, programs, and reporting going forward. Today, I'd like to take the opportunity to explain the genesis of sustainability at Telstra and to introduce you to some of the thinking behind our current strategy and the context of how that is informed.
Importantly, I also want to present to you some of our performance highlights for FY2020. So looking at the slide on the screen, some of the key pullouts. Where we started, we had a Chief Sustainability Officer established in 2011.
Prior to that, prior to the CSO being established, our sustainability approach was ad hoc and, to some degree, unfocused. Developing a centralized, consistent approach has provided clear brand and reputational value for Telstra. Over the past decade, we have built up a strong reputation as one of the corporate sector's leaders, leading sustainability performance, delivering targeted programs that are aligned to our strategy and, importantly, aligned to our tech expertise. Since 2011, we've helped around 1 million vulnerable customers to connect each year. We've created hundreds of millions of AUD worth of value through targeted community investments. We've provided around 23,000 people a year the skills they need to thrive online through our digital literacy programs, and we've made significant environmental gains, including great success in reducing our overall carbon emissions intensity.
Thinking about the strategy that we've taken, at the core, it's about thriving in a digital world. Our strategy reflects the issues that are most material to our business, the areas in which we have expertise to make a meaningful impact, and where we see opportunities to use innovative, tech-based solutions to help address major societal challenges and opportunities. So looking at the next slide in terms of sustainability at Telstra, this is the strategic context in which we're operating. The responsible business agenda is key to our success in the current operating environment. Stakeholder expectations are increasing, and trust in institutions is at an all-time low in Australia.
This is fundamentally changing the relationship between business and society. As the banking inquiry and ongoing APRA inquiry into CBA have shown us, there are real regulatory and legal impacts for companies who don't manage their day-to-day business responsibly.
The ramifications of the inquiry for corporate Australia in terms of people, culture, governance, brand, reputation, regulatory imposed costs, and importantly, the VIS audience share price have been significant. In a competitive environment, maintaining trust is critical. Along with many of the customer initiatives being undertaken as part of our T22 strategy, we see our responsible business agenda as a key element to how Telstra will maintain trust in the current environment.
Each year, we conduct a materiality review to identify and prioritize the issues of greater significance to Telstra and our stakeholders, including yourselves, and look in considering our investors. While in some instances, this process confirms the obvious, that we have material issues such as privacy and data security and, of course, at the heart of our business, customer experience. They're well known to us and require a significant amount of management attention.
But the process also helps us to ensure that our internal priorities remain aligned to shifting stakeholder expectations and industry best practice. And really importantly, it helps us to identify emerging trends that will become material for Telstra over time. And a good example of that is the rising interest in the ethical implications of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. So we'll be kicking off the process for our FY2021 materiality review in January next year. And at that point, we'll engage with you formally in our annual survey to see what issues are most material for you and your stakeholders. So looking then at our strategy.
Our strategy is focused on helping everyone thrive in a digital world. And it has three pillars which are focused on addressing the most significant impacts and opportunities. So going around the circle, we have responsible business.
We then have digital futures and environmental solutions. All three of these need to interplay to deliver on our sustainability strategy. Drilling down a little bit more into each of these, looking at the next slide, we see responsible business is all about ethics and governance, culture, and capabilities. Digital futures for us is about the everyone in our purpose. It's about keeping everyone connected and having networks and technology delivering good, good for communities, good for our customers. Then the third element is environmental solutions. That is where we have been having really strong focus on our work on climate change and energy and, importantly, resource efficiency as well. Looking then at responsible business, if we drill down to each of those pillars.
In the current climate, it's critical that Telstra is viewed by its customers and its stakeholders as being a responsible business that they can trust. The concept for us of thinking about responsible business starts with managing our business with ethics and with integrity and being guided by our values and making sure that we're doing things that are right for our customers. In FY2020, we made significant progress towards our long-term responsible business targets. We helped around 2.6 million customers to stay connected in a COVID-19 environment through support packages.
Our Strategic Net Promoter Score, one of the most important scores from my perspective because it's about the judgment that our customers are giving us, it was up by 5 points in FY2019. We had increased our female representation from 32.3% in the Telstra Group, up by 1.3% from FY2019.
Then a score that I think is really, really important in terms of sustainability because it's at the core of how we deliver our services through our people. We achieved an uplift in sustainability engagement of a really substantial 16 points from FY2019 to 83%. We were also the first major Australian company to introduce a paid epidemic and pandemic leave policy, including extending that to our casuals. We invested more than AUD 28 million in employee learning and development.
We created employment opportunities for more than 520 people through our very special supported and Indigenous workforce programs. We also extended our career tracker program for a 10-year extension supporting Indigenous graduates. But we did not meet all of our targets, and we did not meet our conduct training target. So in FY2019, we had 98.3% of our employees conducted this training.
This year, that was 89.4% of Telstra Group employees. And that includes continued workers completing the mandatory refresher training. But a number of factors affected our completion result rates this year. Firstly, with COVID affected several functions in our business, including some of our contingent workforce located in India and Philippines were impacted by closures. But once local restrictions are eased and staff will complete training as soon as practical. And then also, we had did have a number of contingent workers because of the difficulties in accessing Telstra systems through times when we had closures, and not being able to access from some of their home IT systems, which meant that we had those lower response rates and completion rates.
But as a mitigation, these individuals were provided a hard copy of those Telstra code of conduct. no, access to a copy.
So let's then look at what that second pillar about digital futures. Our digital futures program lies at the heart of our purpose at Telstra, to ensure that everyone can enjoy a brilliantly connected future, a connected future where everyone can thrive. In FY2020, looking at some of these results, if I pull them out, we trained 23,000 people through our digital capability programs. We provided around 6,500 smartphones to women impacted by family and domestic violence. We helped around 900,000 vulnerable customers to stay connected. We switched on more than 700 Mobile Black Spot Program sites.
We invested AUD 5.3 million in Telstra Foundation-funded initiatives, which are designed to connect technology through community and make through that do community impact and support young people to thrive online. We provided AUD 150 million worth of value through our social and community investment programs.
We also announced partnerships with five major universities to build skills for the future. We didn't make our tech-for-good target around funding as funding was scaled back, and it was important to highlight that while we were close to that target, it was not met. Looking then at our environmental solutions. This year, I'm very proud to say that we announced a new environment strategy that embraces innovation and technology to help address key environmental challenges. Our environmental programs are very well embedded in our business and deliver real cost savings for Telstra every year, as well as environmental benefits. We made significant progress against our environmental targets this year.
We were proudly certified as neutral across our operations in July 2020 against a target we announced earlier this year. We collected almost 4,000 tons of e-waste with a high recycling rate of 100%.
We reduced our carbon emission intensity by 55%, and that's from the FY2017 baseline year. We were also recognized on the CDP A-list, though I would note that overnight we have had the recent results, most recent results of our CDP rating, and we have been rating still in a leadership area as an A-minus. Looking now to the ambitious climate goals that we set, we announced them, and we are driving them hard in our business. Some of them are very long-term targets. We also invested AUD 3.7 million in energy reduction programs, saving over 10,000 t of CO2 emissions. We collected 19.7 tons of mobile phones and accessories for recycling through the Mobile Muster program. Again, I should highlight where we didn't meet our targets. We didn't meet our environmental and resource efficiency targets.
We were very much on track to meet this with the 60 tons we had been targeting, but due to the COVID-19 restrictions, collections were put on hold, and so in the end we ended the year at 59 tons. So looking then to how we measure and report on our progress. On reporting, I hope that you've been able to see our Bigger Picture Sustainability Report because that is a key reporting tool for us. It's published annually. It summarizes our approach, our performance against strategic targets, initiatives undertaken throughout the year to improve social, environmental, and customer outcomes.
Along with meeting our GRI reporting requirements, it includes UNGC communication on progress disclosures and now our TCFD disclosures. In relation to ESG indices, we receive dozens of requests to respond to the range of ESG indices each year. We respond to as many as we can.
But I would say if there are specific indices that you would like to see us respond to, please do let us know. We are pleased to have been named very recently the highest-ranked company in relation to digital inclusion on the World Benchmarking Alliance's 2020 Digital Inclusion Benchmark. That happened last week. Some of the other indices we're recognized within include the Equileap Top 200 Companies for Gender Equality, the Vigeo Eiris Top Global 120 Companies list. We're a member of the FTSE4Good, the Ethibel Sustainability Index in terms of excellence in their global division. The MSCI, we have an A rating. And I have just mentioned previously, we now have an A-minus rating on the CDP rating which has just been released. So I'll hand back to Will.
Thanks, Jules. We'll now open up for questions.
A reminder that if you do have a question, please enter it into the interaction zone below this screen, which you can do at any time during the session. Jules, we've got the first question that's come in. What action is Telstra taking on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals?
So at Telstra, we see technology and indeed digital inclusion as an enabler of our actions on SDGs. And this is reflected in our focus that you have just heard as I walk through in our sustainability strategy. So our strategy is aimed at helping people to thrive in a digital world, and it includes initiatives and targets to address our impacts and opportunities in relation to our four priority SDGs that we have been focusing on. And those four that we focused on are gender equality, decent work, and economic growth. We focus on industry innovation and infrastructure and on climate action.
So our SDG priorities reflect the areas that we believe Telstra is best placed to contribute to, whether that be through partnering with major universities, for example, to build skills for the future and to ensure that we represent the communities within which we operate.
I think another good example is providing smartphones and technology advice to women impacted by family violence. We also a good example is the training that we've been doing for thousands of people through our digital capability programs. And also, if we think about the climate action priority, we've been minimizing our environmental footprint by reducing emissions, recycling devices, and the steps that we've taken this year to being carbon neutral.
Great. Thanks, Jules. Next question we've got here is, what impact has COVID-19 had on your program delivery this year?
Thanks. Well, I think that everyone couldn't envisage what a year this would be and the way that the impacts have flown through. So, as has been the case for all of us, COVID has required us to reconsider some of the programs and particularly how we deliver those in an online environment. And in many instances, we've also been provided the opportunity to really partner with organizations and innovate to see how we could maximize the impact of their programs that we work on in the environment that we found ourselves in.
S o I think about, like, what we have done in terms of the impact, and I think about it in terms of providing us with an opportunity to actually support those, and particularly those most vulnerable in our communities in COVID, but also an opportunity to help our partners to pivot as well.
So some examples maybe I will draw out in relation to, well, our face-to-face Tech Savvy Seniors programs and social seniors. That was so much based on face-to-face training. But we were able to deliver online in two of the largest states, New South Wales and Victoria, and that's been really successful. And we'll continue to offer online training as part of our standard now digital literacy offers going forward. We also increased the numbers of smartphones which we provided to WESNET as part of our Safe Connections partnership. We increased that by 25% because we saw that as very important with the increase that we had seen in relation to domestic and family violence during the lockdown and the increased stress that was in households during the COVID situations.
Within our Telstra Foundation, this is where I'm particularly proud of the pivot that we were able to do. So we put the challenge to our partners of how, in this environment using technology, we could see what we could achieve where in programs which were often largely based on face-to-face types of delivery. So we provided the flexibility for our partners to pivot to and they responded in spades in relation to the shifting demand and increasing demand, and in particular in relation to some of our programs like the focus on mental health services through a pivoting of a COVID-19 mental health relief package. This package enabled us to work with two partners in particular, which is ReachOut and Orygen Digital, to quickly digitize the youth mental health services that they provide into an online delivery model.
This is all in addition to relief packages and support which we provided to our customers, particularly our vulnerable customers. Linda will talk more about that when we take up the responsible business items shortly.
Great. Thanks, Jules. The next question that's come in is, why is Telstra focusing resources on sustainability initiatives when performance elsewhere in the business could use more focus?
I think that's a really reasonable question. But as an organization, it's really important, I think, for this audience to understand that we are incredibly focused on executing T22. And as we detailed recently in our investor day, we know all too well that we will only be successful and successful for our shareholders if our customers, employees, and our communities enjoy success as well. So as we have seen firsthand this year and very much in recent weeks, there are very real regulatory, legal, reputational impacts for customers when they don't get this balance right.
We believe that it's through our sustainability strategy that we are able to proactively manage key social and environmental risks as they emerge and ensure that we are meeting all of our stakeholders' expectations sufficiently because we think that that is essential to maintain the social license that we need to operate.
Thanks for that, Jules. We've got one last question here. What governance mechanisms are in place to ensure Telstra meets its sustainability commitments?
Yeah. It's really critical for us to ensure that we have appropriate governance and risk management throughout our business. The Telstra board is responsible for overseeing and monitoring the effectiveness of our sustainability strategy and policies. The board receives updates from us on that sustainability progress two times a year. Further updates are provided as appropriate or required during the year. The board also approves our annual Modern Slavery Act statement, which you'll hear more about today from Michael, and plays a key role in identifying our list of material sustainability topics, which in turn then informs our strategy and the development of our programs. They have a key role in regard to our annual reporting.
Within Telstra, our sustainability team is responsible for championing and embedding sustainability principles across Telstra and ensuring we're managing the risks and opportunities related to current and emerging sustainability issues. We work with the business to deliver social and environmental programs and outcomes, and they are making sure that they are outcomes for not just our customers but broadly for communities. The team also oversees implementation of that strategy that we have just stepped through. They work closely with the business to ensure key targets are set, tracked, and performance indicators are met. I think our approach is supported by a number of frameworks, but what I would particularly highlight is the policies that we are supported by. So they include, importantly, the backbone of our conduct, which is through our group code of conduct.
We have policies regarding diversity and inclusion, health and safety, privacy, human rights, environmental, and disability service policies. Importantly, and probably of interest to this group as well, is the Supplier Code of Conduct. That sets expectations not just that are relevant for us but expectations that we're setting for our business partners and that broader supply chain.
Great. Thanks, Jules. That's all we have for the Q&A part for this session. I'll now hand over to Linda to take you through the first of our deep dives, Responsible Business.
Thanks, William. I'm Lyndall Stoyles, Telstra's Group General Counsel and Group Executive for Sustainability, External Affairs, and Legal. I joined Telstra on 1 April this year and lead the function responsible for providing legal advice, policy advice, stakeholder management, and community programs across the government relations, sorry, regulatory, sustainability, and regional affairs areas within Telstra. I joined Telstra from Caltex where I was the executive general manager for people, communications, and governance as well as the group general counsel and company secretary. Today, I'm gonna talk about responsible business.
This is one of the three pillars of our sustainability strategy, the other two being the ones that Jules focused on, digital inclusion and climate change. What it means to be a responsible business in 2020 can be interpreted in a myriad of ways by organizations, by customers, and indeed by the investment community.
What is agreed upon, however, is that companies must conduct their business responsibly because stakeholders simply won't accept anything less. At the end of the last decade, community trust in the corporate sector had reached a new low point. And yet, in a short space of time, more and more corporates are standing up on important issues. Companies are demonstrating they understand the expectations on them and their responsibilities to the communities in which they operate. Thoughtful companies realize they are only successful for their shareholders if their customers, employees, and communities enjoy success as well. For us, being a responsible business is about doing what's right. It means being accountable for our own actions and stepping up when times are tough, which this year has certainly required.
COVID-19 has challenged us to adapt to find new ways to support our customers, our people, and the communities in which we operate, particularly when times are tough. Our actions have included suspending job reductions, supporting casual workers, increasing recruitment in Australia, bringing forward CapEx spending, creating relief programs for small business and consumer customers as we did during the bushfires as well, and providing unlimited data allowances for fixed, broadband, and mobile customers. At the same time, we've not lost sight of our shareholders. Quite the contrary. All of us have adapted to working, studying, and self-isolating from home in response to COVID. We move quickly to shift our entire organization to work productively in a remote way. And while we've had some challenges with customer support in some areas, we've worked hard to address these quickly.
The rest of the company didn't miss a beat, and we continued to work productively and efficiently from home. This was critical as demand for connectivity reached an all-time high as the COVID pandemic accelerated the digital revolution and Australia's trajectory towards a digital economy. This shift has made clear the critical importance of telecommunications networks and the value of our T22 strategy. We've seen a fundamental shift in online usage from customer service support to online shopping to telehealth to home learning and working, as demonstrated by these stats. Peak data traffic on our fixed network increased by as much as 70% at the height of the pandemic as people moved to work and study from home. The peak time for internet use at home shifted from 9:00 P.M. pre-COVID to 4:00 P.M. during COVID.
We've also seen an upload traffic increase more than 50% as use of video meetings exploded. As it changed the way people interact with us as well, before COVID, around 50% of consumers contacted us through digital options. Now, this is more than 70%. As the country looks to digital economy to get us through the COVID impacts, Telstra will play a vital role in helping Australians use digital tools and technology to get back on track. We're also cognizant, though, that there are still 2.5 million Australians who remain offline, nearly 1 in 10 who are cut off from the digital services that have proved so crucial to many during the pandemic.
The 2020 Australian Digital Inclusion Index report released in October shows that a high level of digital inequality persists. Many Australians continue to miss out on the benefits of being online.
As this year's report highlights, there's much more work to do to close the digital divide and give Australians equal access to vital services. The Inclusion Index is an annual study of digital inclusion in Australia. It's produced by the RMIT University's Digital Ethnography Research Centre and Swinburne University's Centre for Social Impact. This is done in partnership with Telstra. The research explores digital inclusion in terms of three dimensions: access, affordability, and digital ability. It's a source of evidence and a guide for action. The index shows us where digital inclusion is improving and where more needs to be done. For example, we know that there are approximately 800,000 secondary students in Australia who are from households that earn less than AUD 35,000 a year. They're lacking access to technology options and suitable devices.
They pay a larger proportion of their household income for digital services and generally have lower digital skills. We also know that people aged 65 and above are one of the least digitally included groups in Australia. Around 1 in 5 older Australians do not use the internet, and that is a problem in the COVID era. It means older Australians are less able to mitigate against the isolation brought on by social restrictions with the use of technology and digital alternatives. The good news is that the index showed Australian internet users are accessing the internet more often, using an increasingly diverse range of communications technologies, and taking up higher-speed internet services. Digital inclusion is a shared national challenge, one made more pronounced by the impact of COVID.
And the index shows that there's more work to be done, urgent work that is needed if we're all Australians are to benefit from the digital economy. Having access to these stats helps us focus our efforts in the right place to make sure we're supporting those who need extra support. Along with helping around 2.6 million people stay connected during the COVID pandemic, we provided assistance to around 900,000 vulnerable customers and enabled 23,000 people to receive digital capabilities training in FY2020.
We do this through a number of programs, including Access for Everyone program, which supports those experiencing financial hardship, the Safe Connections program, which supports women experiencing domestic and family violence, our digital literacy programs like Tech Savvy Seniors and Deadly Digital Communities, and the Telstra Foundation partnerships, which back initiatives that build community resilience and enable young people to thrive in a digital world.
It's these programs that have seen Telstra take out the top spot in the 2020 Digital Inclusion Benchmark by the World Benchmarking Alliance. It's a multi-stakeholder initiative brought together by groups such as Aviva, Index Initiative, the UN Foundation, and the Business and Sustainable Development Commission. We know how essential digital technologies are for keeping people connected, and our sustainability strategy focuses on helping people thrive in a digital world. This year also brought many things back to first principles, highlighting again the importance of being able to connect to people and things we love, the services and information we need, and the communities to which we belong. While we strive to promote digital inclusion for all Australians, we do, however, have to face into the reality that we don't always get it right.
It's how you show up in these moments, the difficult moments, that can really test if you're as committed to your values as you claim. A few weeks ago, it was announced that we'd reached a settlement with the ACCC, including a proposed penalty of AUD 50 million in relation to unconscionable conduct. This conduct involved five Telstra licensed stores that were engaged in inappropriate sales practices to 108 Indigenous consumers between January 2016 and August 2018. While it was a small number of licensed stores that did not do the right thing, the impact on these vulnerable customers has been significant, and this is not okay. We've taken steps to provide full refunds with interest, waive debts, and allowed most customers to keep their devices to try and help make things right.
It's important to note that the ACCC agrees that our board and senior executives were not aware of, involved in, or authorised these sales practices. The settlement, though, will now be considered by the federal court. What we're focused on is building trust with our customers and operating responsibly. So it's extremely disappointing when things go wrong, especially when we needed to act more quickly and with a better understanding of the issues affecting customers in vulnerable circumstances. Being a responsible business and doing what is right for customers and the community is not negotiable for Telstra. Part of being accountable for your own actions means you've got to stand up when you've got it wrong and learn from your mistakes.
Earlier this year, our CEO, Andy Penn, visited the Northern Territory, South Australia, and Western Australia to meet with some of the affected communities and customers to apologize and hear firsthand the impact that these sales practices had had on them. We've appointed a customer advocate to help us better identify and respond to issues like these. Plus, we're working closely with community representatives and financial counselors due to their expertise and relationship with many of the customers involved. We've also accelerated ways to improve our experience for all customers right across the company and with licensees. This includes removing excess data charges on our new simplified mobile plans, better processes to cater for affordability, including tighter credit checks, new rules on selling to customers who may be vulnerable, improved staff training, and changing our sales incentives with licensees.
We've now passed the halfway point of our T22 strategy and are becoming a much leaner, simpler, and digital sorry, company for our customers. As T22 progresses, there are things we need to focus on to ensure the telecommunications industry remains viable while supporting our digital economy. We need the right policy and regulatory settings to set up the whole industry for success, and this includes NBN pricing. We need to change the way we serve our customers, mainly adopting digital processes. Using AI may be quicker and smarter, but recognizing that this will require adjustment for many, including our teams and customers, as we learn new, more digital ways of operating.
We know what's important to our customers, so voice calls will be answered in Australia for our consumer and small business customers by the end of T22, and we'll continue to invest in delivering the connectivity, products, and services our customers and country needs. We're also creating a future workplace experience for our people and future team members. That's about building on our long-valued approach to flexible working by giving people choice with where and how they work and technology that helps them perform at their best wherever they're located. We're committed to making these changes and building a future-ready Telstra for the benefit of our people, customers, shareholders, and the communities we live and work in.
We'll be guided as we make these changes by our purpose, and that is to build a connected future where everyone can thrive as well as our values.
Living up to our purpose and our values is at the heart of being a responsible business. As we continue to work through this extraordinary year and into 2021 and what will be an extraordinary new era of technology innovation, we must also never lose sight of the fact that the how we do things is just as important as the why we do them. Thank you, and I'll now hand back to William.
Thanks, Lyndall. We'll now move on to Q&A, and remember that you can enter your questions into the interaction zone below the screen throughout the session. So the first question we've received is, "Lyndall, regarding the sale of products to Indigenous consumers in 2016-2018 and your emphasis on building a trusting brand for customers, what specific training has been provided to franchisees in the area, and how is management monitoring this over time?" And to follow up that question as well, "What safeguards have you put in place to ensure this type of incident does not happen again, to provide confidence to investors that there is an open system of communication within your organization to deal with this as there was a lot of reputational damage which resulted from this incident?
Thanks, William. Big questions. So I'll address the first one first. In terms of the training that we've provided both to our licensees and to our people on the ground in our stores, we focused on a few things. But the first thing that we've actually focused on is simplifying our products because what we realized through this experience was that it was the complexity in our products that added and contributed to the problem. So we've simplified our products, including by removing excess data charges and also applying some caps around the amount of products that people can actually take from us.
This helps to mitigate the potential for there to be surprises for customers to be surprised by receiving a larger bill than they expected, either through excess data charges or because some people had up to eight devices. So that's the first thing.
Secondly, in relation to the training that we've provided, we've provided training both in terms of clarity about the products that we sell but also training in terms of determining what is it that the customer truly needs and wants from us rather than what we actually want to sell. So there is an enormous amount of work that has gone into that kind of training and hardship training as well so we can work out and better assess what customers can actually truly afford.
In terms of what I think it was described, William, as safety mechanisms we've put in place to ensure that this doesn't happen again, I think the challenge we will always have is that we are a large and complicated company with many customers, and so we're not in a position that we can guarantee things will never happen again.
However, what we have done is that we've got this clarity about what we sell and how we sell and what our expectations are of our people. We've got a far greater oversight over how things are sold so that if problems do arise, we can pick up on them more quickly and act more quickly. So one of the critical learnings we learnt from this was that we weren't close enough to the actual sales to be able to identify the problem quickly enough nor act quickly enough in order to address the problem. And so that's critical that we're actually more closely monitor how things are actually being sold and the customer experience in order for us to be able to pick up if there is an issue more quickly.
We've also done some work on the commissions that licensees receive to try and provide more of a balanced scorecard that focuses as much on customer experience as it does actually on the financial results that they may deliver. I think we think that all of these things combined will help ensure a better experience for customers but also allow us to pick up more quickly when problems do arise so we can address it more quickly.
Fingers right. Thanks, Lyndall. Next question is, "How can Telstra claim to be the best at digital inclusion when you've let down so many Indigenous customers?
Yeah, a very, very fair question and one that we have been thinking about very deeply within our organization. So I think our claim to be the best in digital inclusion is something that has been recognized externally rather than necessarily by us. So the World Benchmarking Alliance is the one that has actually recognized us as being number one in digital inclusion. Saying that, we have been very open all year since we really understood the depth of the issue, both about what actually took place but also about what we have done to remediate the customers that were harmed by this conduct.
That has included not just the things that I mentioned about waiving debts and allowing customers to keep devices and things like that, but we've also put in place a number of programs in these communities that help support the communities to better understand and ask the right kind of questions when they are looking to buy a telecommunication service or device. There's a lot of work.
There's one particular program that has gone into some of the communities that supports teenage schoolkids by providing them with the information about what you need to know in order to work out what you want, what telecommunication service you want, and what questions you should ask when you're buying that and helping them actually work with us to better educate people within their communities so they can make sure that they are buying things that are right for their needs rather than things that our people may want to sell them.
Okay, great. Thanks, Lyndall. And the final question we have is, "Why is Telstra focused on being a responsible business and a good corporate citizen?
Telstra is focused on this both because it's what we truly believe a corporation needs to do but also because we think that it is the key way in which we can ensure that we are delivering products and services that customers want, creating a working environment that employees want to work in, maximizing the benefits to the communities we operate in and minimizing the harm. Through doing all of these things and really focusing on that customer experience and that people experience, we believe that we will continue to be and become even more a company that delivers real value to our shareholders.
Okay, great. Thanks, Lyndall. That's all the questions we have for that particular Q&A. We'll now take a five-minute break, and when we return, Michael will take you through our approach to modern slavery.
So at Telstra, we produce millions of kilos of both branded and co-branded packaging in our system. A lot of it can actually be recycled, but a lot of it actually ends up in areas such as landfills. So we're actually unable to recycle them due to a number of reasons. Now, what we identified on top of that was there wasn't a consistent way of how we approach our packaging within the organization. So everything was coming through quite disparate, not unified, and showing up in the customer realm in a really disjointed way. So we went about and addressed that with the current packaging guidelines that you can see.
And where we ended up was awesome. So basically, the net result is we were able to reduce the materials in that packaging compared to the current design by 75%.
On top of that, we ensured that we ended up with something that was 100% recyclable. So you'll see the new designs are built on Kraft board, so very kind of natural-looking paper-based. The really exciting part is that we were actually able to reduce the cost of this particular item by 50%. So for me personally and the team, it's really exciting to have a project that actually has so much impact in so many ways, both from a commercial standpoint, from an operational standpoint, but also one that will actually have positive benefits on an environmental standpoint. It's one that we are all individually really proud of and just really excited to see go into market.
I'm very passionate about equity in education, a real belief that every child within our system has the right to have the same access to quality teaching and learning regardless of where you're situated. Prior to the fibre rollout, some of the challenges we faced was the unreliability of the internet. By not having the connectivity, one of the things I noticed with teachers was that they were leaving school fairly soon after the students had left because for what they wanted to do with their programming and planning, they were heading home and downloading information onto USBs, and home was 45 km away in Ceduna.
Once we got the connectivity, teachers were staying at school. They were working together. They were collaborating. And I still remember going into a classroom and this Year 4 girl running up to me saying, "Mrs.
Hector, this is what the Great Barrier Reef looks like." And she was the smile on her face, the excitement of seeing something live in front of her. And she's now got a dream, and her dream is about seeing the Great Barrier Reef. So that's the stuff that really makes your heart sing because that is connection, and that is true learning. I do believe that the rollout of the fibre gave us the opportunities for our students to access the world and not be isolated from it.
ReachOut and Telstra have been partnering for more than 18 years, which I think speaks to the vision of not only ReachOut but of Telstra in seeing the potential for technology and mental health to come together like this. ReachOut's a digital mental health service designed for young people and their parents. We've been around for more than 20 years, and everything we deliver is delivered online. As soon as COVID hit, our service demand increased by 50% and then stayed like that for the first 5 weeks. One of the things that was so amazing about Telstra was that even right at that early stage, when there was so much that was so uncertain, the foundation was so quick to come to us and let them know that the support that they had pledged would hold.
Not only that, they were looking at increasing it, which they've done. Telstra's commitment will allow us to make sure we can continue to adapt to what's been a very changing situation with COVID and keep our service relevant for young people and parents and continue delivering great support for young people into the future.
Good morning, everyone. The expectations on businesses of the awareness and management of human rights and modern slavery are rapidly evolving. I can't think of a topic with such a significant trajectory from the purview of niche NGOs into the boardroom of large businesses around the world in such a few short years. Today, I'll talk through a few things: how we identify and manage modern slavery risk. I'll give a bit of insight into our largest areas of risk, the supply chain in particular, and share some perspectives on how we manage issues and why a partnership is so important. Firstly, though, to level set with some context. COVID has exacerbated social inequality. Supply chain disruptions, border closures, lockdowns have meant those in vulnerable circumstances are at greater risk of exploitation.
At the same time, we're also seeing increasing regulation with many countries and jurisdictions requiring human rights or supply chain transparency reporting. Those that aren't are considering it with proposed legislation set to be introduced across many jurisdictions such as Hong Kong, Switzerland, and Canada. Expectations of businesses are increasing at the same time, but trust in business and institutions is at an all-time low. In that context, we're also seeing stakeholders expect more and more of business.
From a customer perspective, both individual consumers as well as our larger end of town, the business enterprise customers, are requesting more information on the products and services they purchase. Many of our large customers, including government, are also caught by modern slavery legislation and expecting us, their suppliers, to have robust management systems in place. We're also seeing investors asking more questions.
All of this is leading to enhanced scrutiny on business, and this is compounded by the digital age, increasing access to information, also meaning that workers are increasingly empowered to speak up. At the same time, we've got corporate benchmarks and NGOs are naming and shaming and becoming increasingly sophisticated in their activism. All of this means it's no longer sufficient to have a human rights policy. Companies must demonstrate that they have a meaningful, risk-based approach to managing human rights and modern slavery. Telstra manages the risk of modern slavery through its broader human rights program. We have a range of external commitments as well as legislative requirements which we abide by.
We use the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights as our key guide on how we approach, and we regularly review our human rights risks to come up with the most salient human rights risks.
When we're identifying human rights risk, it involves looking right across the value chain. This slide outlines some of the key areas we've identified as high risk of human rights. Just to pick out a few of them, in terms of products, there's a few risk spots, but not least of all, electronic product manufacturing, which occurs primarily in high-risk countries and often many tiers down the supply chain. In terms of services, we have a large contingent workforce which provides a range of services to Telstra and its customers. Some of these workers are located in high-risk regions such as India and the Philippines. We also have a quite large construction and physical network infrastructure piece, which is high-risk due to the nature of the work and also the use of contingent workers.
We also run a Telstra store network, which is a licensee network where workers are not directly employed by us. So in terms of our human rights program, it continues to mature and respond to those known risk areas. I thought it'd be useful just to demonstrate conceptually how we manage human rights and how we've integrated into existing frameworks and management approaches. So at the top of the slide there, you can see our purpose and values, which really guide our behaviors and actions. Sitting underneath that, there's a suite of Telstra Group policies that set out our human rights commitments and expectations. There's also a number of other supporting policies such as occupational health and safety, privacy, diversity, inclusion, and so on that really represent that human rights is this umbrella topic.
Sitting right underneath that is our human rights compliance program, which pulls together all our various regulatory requirements and external commitments into a set of principles which all the functions are required to abide by. The compliance plan covers our operations right through to our supply chain as well as our business partners. Each functional area of Telstra is required to complete a risk assessment against each of the principles and, based on the risk level, implement appropriate controls. Sitting underneath the compliance program, you can see the functional areas that we've called out, both supply chains and operations. We've identified, I guess, some of the key controls which sit within those regions to manage the risk. Supply chain is the area of our largest risk, and I'll go into a bit more detail on that one shortly.
In terms of our operations, workforce and recruitment have been identified as having higher risk and is managed by things like a global employment framework that complies with local laws and covers aspects such as wages, leave entitlements, and hours of work. Our recruitment policy helps ensure we have a consistent and fair process, and this is used for both our permanent and contingent workforce, and all our recruitment agencies are required to follow it. In addition, our online recruitment management system has various gateways to ensure that policies are followed, and this includes things such as verifying age and right-to-work status. In terms of our delivery partners, we have three functions: global business services, consumer and small business, as well as networks and IT, which use a high proportion of delivery partners outside of Australia.
To help manage the risk, all delivery partners must sign up to our Supplier Code of Conduct, demonstrate compliance through our controls, whether it be questionnaires, desktop audits, and site visits. But they're also required to have onboarding processes for workers that make them aware of the relevant policies and procedures, entitlements, and to have a functioning ombudsman and whistleblower policies. In terms of the retail network, we operate a network of stores, some of which are owned by Telstra, some of which are not, which are the licensees. There's various dealership arrangements in place with partners such as JB Hi-Fi and The Good Guys.
To ensure workers' rights are upheld across this broad network, we have a range of practices in place, including annual attestations by our licensees of compliance with the terms of their agreement, including employment and labor obligations.
There's operational reviews, which are conducted on a quarterly basis where performance is reviewed against those commitments. This year, we actually expanded our supplier sustainability audit program to include licensees, and we audited about 5% of our licensee network through that program. In terms of training and awareness, our aim is to raise awareness of human rights and modern slavery across the entire organization. There's probably two categories of training that have been developed to support this. There's just general awareness, which everyone must complete as part of their Business Essentials training. Then there's a bit more focus on roles that carry specific risks. So, for example, all executives and people leaders across Telstra, as well as those that are responsible for managing procurement, recruitment, or managing business partners, are in scope of much more detailed training.
In addition, our procurement professionals must complete even more specific procurement-focused training. And then sitting across the bottom, industry associations, which is a really important part of the ecosystem, and I'll touch on that a little bit later. Going into a little bit more detail on our largest risk area, supply chain, we manage sustainability-related risks in our supply chain using our Supplier Risk Governance Framework. This assesses suppliers across a broad range of risks. The key document which sets out the expectations for suppliers is our Supplier Code of Conduct, which basically outlines the minimum expectations and forms part of our purchasing terms.
This is regularly updated as our knowledge grows, and we use it as a basis to engage suppliers. Over FY2020, we updated our Supplier Code of Conduct and reminded suppliers of the commitments within it with a message from our Chief Executive to suppliers.
We also held a forum focusing on our top 100 suppliers to discuss the code of conduct and the key changes and what it meant for them. To assess and manage the risk in our supply chain, we complete a range of due diligence activities, which include supplier questionnaires, document reviews, media assessments, as well as on-site audits. We also use a centralized procurement system and team to help reduce risk even further. In terms of our supplier due diligence program, one of the key areas and an area of particular focus from stakeholders is our supplier audit program. In FY2020, we audited approximately well, we audited 46 supplier sites.
We use independent third-party auditors who use industry standards on the basis to complete their audits. We also partner with our industry peers, namely through the Joint Audit Cooperation, to complete some of these audits.
This partnership really allows us to go beyond tier one and audit down to tiers two and three in particular. This is really critical in lifting up the industry as a whole and getting deeper into our supply chain. Now, to date, we haven't identified any instances of modern slavery, but we do find things from time to time that are not aligned to our Supplier Code of Conduct. Over FY2020, we found 14 critical or unacceptable findings, and these predominantly related to working hours and health and safety. Our approach to remediation is to work with a supplier to correct any issues identified and to confirm the findings have been appropriately actioned. This is done by a re-audit to confirm that the actions have been addressed before we actually close them off ourselves.
In terms of giving a little bit more color on how we approach remediation, because I think this is a really important part of demonstrating effectiveness, we're very transparent in our statement around where we do find issues that give us concern and the steps we've taken to remediate. I thought it'd just be useful to spend a bit of time how we've sort of approached those to date because I think that's useful in terms of your thinking as you engage with other companies. Key lesson number one is that any finding is really complex to navigate. There's no one-size-fits-all response. That is, it's situation-specific, and it's really based on our relationship and leverage with the organization in question. It's also clear that coming together across the business to arrive at that agreed solution is the best path.
To give a little bit more color on the case study that's on screen, this was originally found through our supplier audit program, but the response was managed internally via a multidisciplinary team, which included representatives from legal, our local India people team, which really helped us understand the local legal requirements, the whistleblowing team, including the company secretary, sustainability, as well as executives from the areas of the business which purchased the goods and services from this supplier, as well as, obviously, procurement. We all had to really understand the issue, speak to our various perspectives, and collectively decide on how to proceed. Obviously, there's a lot of internal discussion and perspectives, but ensuring the best outcome for impacted workers was a key sort of outcome that we're all working towards.
In the end, this supplier agreed to our actions, and a follow-up audit confirmed that the changes requested had been made. This really underlines, I guess, the importance of our approach, which is try to work with the supplier rather than terminate. If we terminate, we lose all leverage to improve the conditions. In the past, we unfortunately have had to go down this path, and we've disclosed this in prior modern slavery statements. In terms of working with partners, I think modern slavery is a really complex issue, and working with industry peers is a way to effectively respond to the issue but also to increase the leverage we have with suppliers. We're part of the Joint Audit Cooperation, or JAC, which is a global ICT industry group which shares the results of sustainability audits amongst common suppliers.
And then there are companies that include other organizations, other telcos like AT&T, Telefónica, Verizon, Vodafone, and so on. It's through this initiative we also work together on allegations and remediation. When there's action or an issue with a common supplier, a letter is sent on behalf of all JAC members, which helps provide consistency for the supplier and allows us to leverage our work to an agreed solution. We're also members of GeSI, which is a global ICT sustainability industry group which drives greater sustainability across the entire ICT community. This is both network operators as well as technology providers. Telco Together Foundation is an Australian-based telco industry group which aims to make a social contribution to Australia. Its members include all the major Australian telcos, whether it be Optus, Voda, and so on.
A key initiative this year has been to raise the awareness and capability of managing modern slavery risk across the industry. Last week, if you're not familiar with it, TTF put out a leadership statement which was signed by all the major telcos and committing us to a set of principles to work together on modern slavery. In terms of our reporting, and I won't spend too much time on this one, but we obviously produce a Modern Slavery Statement. This year was our fifth, but our first under the new Australian legislation. It's been lodged and available through the Border Force Online Register or, of course, available on our website. We also include other supporting information on sustainable supply chain and the broader work on human rights through our annual Bigger Picture Sustainability Report.
In terms of what next, I think it's really important that there's always more work to do on the topic of human rights and modern slavery. This is not one and done. Suppliers change, circumstances change, risk appetites change, and your program needs to evolve accordingly. So we continue to mature the program and also our reporting, and our intention is to demonstrate year-on-year progress. We've made a number of external commitments through the statement, and we'll report on progress against those in the next year's statement.
A new step forward this year is we're obtaining some pre-assurance over some of the metrics in the statement with the intention of moving this to external assurance in future years. One callout, though, that is really important, particularly in this sort of nascent field, is feedback. We'd find it incredibly useful to help inform our programs and reporting.
Please feel free to drop into the chat or reach out after this roundtable if you've got any areas that you'd like to see further action or reporting or disclosure on. That's all I want to cover, so back to you, Will, for Q&A.
All right. Thanks, Michael. We'll now take questions, and a reminder that you can submit your questions below the screen. So the first question we have here is, given the importance of onsite audits for identifying modern slavery risks, why did Telstra only conduct audits at 32 suppliers in FY2020?
Yeah. Look, so I think the number is an important one because it's a risk-based approach. So we have a various number of screenings that we do so that we identify the suppliers that we think are the most riskiest, and then we hone in what is a limited audit program on those suppliers where we think the risk is greatest. This is also informed through our work with other telco operators through JAC. And I think we'll probably see the numbers even slightly smaller this year thanks to the impact of COVID. What we have done at the same time is, obviously, really engage much deeper with suppliers and so ensure that whilst we may not be auditing, we're very conscious of the actions they are taking that are in line with our code of conduct.
Great. Thanks, Michael. Next question was, how has COVID-19 impacted your ability to audit offshore suppliers? How do you guard against unintended consequences of contract termination?
Yeah. So look, I think the impacts of COVID are still being felt. Obviously, the numbers, as I sort of mentioned earlier, we think the numbers will be slightly lower this year, and that is what it is. And so I think the process of engaging and having really good relationships and focused on supply chain resilience and continuity of suppliers has been a more immediate focus. And I think it's a bit of a learning experience for all companies, COVID in particular. In terms of the unintended consequences, again, I think this comes back to having the relationship. As I said earlier, if we just terminate whenever we find something that's critical or unacceptable, we instantly lose all leverage to actually engage with the supplier.
Having good relationships where you can discuss and share your point of view and push progress towards something that is the right outcome for the worker is the real path forward here. And doing that ourselves is great, but I think the real answer is that modern slavery and human rights issues are incredibly complex and that we really need the whole ecosystem that is companies, the industry associations, and not-for-profits working together to really hone in on the areas that we need to basically move this to the outcome that we all want.
Great. Thanks, Michael. Next question. In relation to the third-party audits, are the audits pre-announced or are they unannounced spot checks? Do you also team up with NGOs in terms of identifying risks, i.e., above and beyond the third-party audits?
Yep. The majority of the audits are pre-announced and that they form part of a continuation. So we will have a look at what we're seeing in the media, what the responses have been to our self-assessment questionnaires, and the various due diligence that we do in terms of looking at other risk factors, whether it be country of operation, AML sanctions, and so on, to help inform that view of risk. Unannounced audits, I think, are something we are looking at. And sorry, Will, what was the second part of the question?
Do you also team up with NGOs in terms of identifying risks?
Yes. So yes. Look, so look, we're constantly engaging with NGOs in terms of what they're finding, in terms of how they're reviewing and assessing corporate action, both in terms of policy and process. So we're very close to the sort of, I guess, the structural side. I think where we can probably go a little bit better and an area of focus is engaging with NGOs on the ground and understanding the really particular local issues. Currently, we rely on our audit partners to plug that gap, therefore, in the local country, and understand the local context and conditions. And so I think a natural sort of progression for Telstra is to build out that muscle itself.
Great. Another question. With your suppliers, do you have a view on whether it is better to have a more consolidated list of suppliers versus engaging with existing suppliers and improving processes to address potential modern slavery risks?
Yeah. Look, it's probably a question for our procurement people. I think two things. One, if you've got a smaller list, it's probably easier to manage and you have better relationships with them. But I think, as picking up on one of the earlier questions, what COVID has shown is that having resilience and redundancy in your supply chain so that you have a variety of suppliers that you can turn to can help improve customer outcomes and business outcomes. So I think it's a fine balancing act, and there's no silver answer to that silver bullet to that one, I think.
One final question for you, Michael. The Hyderabad case study identifies that bond was removed for all employees delivering services to Telstra and new hires. Does this mean that the supplier was allowed to continue to rely on bonded labour for employees not delivering services to Telstra?
So it was relatively bonded labor, I think, is how in terms of the local context, it's permissible under Indian law to actually repay any training that you had under your employment. So I'd have to confirm exactly how far the supplier went, but certainly, we're obviously focused about the workers working on our particular project. So maybe we can come back on that one.
Okay. Great. So if the person had that question of you, just send us an email. We're more than happy to clarify that for you. All right. That's all the questions we have for Q&A. Thanks, Michael. I'll now hand over to Tom to take you through the last of our deep dives, environment and climate change.
Thanks, Will. I wanted to spend a few minutes to share with you some of our environmental commitments and key achievements for the year, including in particular our carbon neutral certification that happened in 2020. So this year has been one of our major milestones for this year has been announcing our new climate change goals and ambition. Although we've had an environmental strategy since around 2013 and been measuring our greenhouse gas emissions since well before that, around 2004 or earlier, this marks a significant increase in our ambition to address climate change impacts. There's many factors, both internal and external, to our business that have contributed to why we've increased our level of ambition around climate change. There's a few on this slide that I want to talk through, which are some of the key ones.
So as a business who operates globally and also in some of the most remote and regional areas of Australia, we're increasingly susceptible to climate change impacts to ensure that our network, our operations, and also our supply chain remain resilient as we continue to operate our network and provide our services. And the increasing frequency and severity of extreme weather events, which are linked to climate change, really has the potential to disrupt populations and economies and have a potentially significant impact on the way that we manage our network and conduct our operations.
That's a really big driver for us in our climate change ambition. One of the other ones is around the increased understanding and level of maturity with the public and the communities around climate change. So we're seeing things like younger generations waking up to the long-term nature of climate change and risk.
We've seen protests, global uprisings, and generally, the globally connected community having more of a voice in this space. One of the other drivers for us and generally around increasing climate change ambition is around transparency and the increased interest from stakeholders amongst this group as well to really understand better the climate change impacts of business and also to increase transparency around disclosure requirements. A key example there is around the TCFD framework. Another one is around actually the opportunity, so not just risk-related activities, but in response to increased public awareness, there is a real opportunity to differentiate in the market around climate change and provide low-carbon products and services that can enable customers and community to reduce their emissions as well. An example for us is around cloud computing services.
We're also seeing a clear uptick in awareness and expectations on the issues from our customers, our suppliers, and also our employees who are looking to see long-term commitment to reduce our impact. Two of the most important environmental issues to our business, based on the materiality review that Jules talked through earlier, is climate change and energy use and also around resource efficiency. That's where we focus our approach and activities and also set our goals and commitments. Our approach to climate change really focuses on three areas. The first is around managing emissions, so reducing the emissions across our operations, but also to find ways to collaborate across our value chain, including with our suppliers, with our customers, to reduce emissions as well. The second one is around resilience and adapting to climate change impacts.
And so that's recognizing that climate change will have an impact and is already on our business, and we need to find ways to adapt to that and to continue to provide services as that happens. And the third area is really around focusing on supporting our customers, communities, and also the economy to more broadly reduce their emissions through low-carbon products and services. On the resource efficiency front, this is really focused on maximizing the value of the physical materials that we use and rely on to operate our network and provide to customers. And that's about contributing to a more circular economy. And the three focus areas for us really in this space are around the products that we provide to customers.
So that's around mobile phones, modems, those sort of products, and importantly, to provide simple and convenient reuse and recycling options for the customers so that those materials can be recovered. The second one is around packaging, and that's about increasing recycled materials in our packaging, eliminating plastic, and ensuring that all our packaging can be recycled. Then the third one is around E-waste. As a large user of equipment and electronic equipment in our network, we generate, as Jules also mentioned, around 4,000 tonnes of E-waste each year, and we have programs in place to ensure that gets recycled. All of these activities and goals are driven by a number of principles that help us to ensure that we're contributing and engaging towards those. The five in the middle of the slide really are focused on leading by example.
So that's holding ourselves to account, making sure that we, as a business, are supporting and really prioritizing those activities to improve our environmental impact. The second one is actually actively reducing our environmental impact or our emissions through things like energy-efficient equipment, decommissioning, or increasing renewable energy. The third one is around engaging with our employees to help them understand and reduce their emissions, but also to engage with our suppliers and to support them on their decarbonization journey, which is part of our scope three emissions activities that we're working on at the moment. We have another piece around engaging with the customers and the community. So this is how we can actually work with them to provide low-carbon emissions products and services, but also how we can sort of enable a transition into a lower-carbon economy.
Then the fifth principle is around adapting to climate impacts, and that's around the resilience of our network to ensure we can continue to operate as we have more increased extreme weather events. These are the principles that guide us to ensure that we're working with all of our stakeholders to drive activity that's needed to achieve our goals. Just for some quick context on the scale of our environmental impact, we have a network that has more than 25,000 assets, including mobile towers, telephone exchanges, data centers located in anything from a metro to a regional area of Australia or internationally. That brings with it energy use around 1.4 million MWh a year, about 1.2 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions. Most of that is driven actually through the electricity we use.
So we have been investing since around 2011 in energy efficiency programs and to date invested around AUD 61 million in actually trying to reduce our energy consumption through energy efficiency measures. This year, we've actually also achieved a 5% reduction in our absolute greenhouse gas emissions as a result of some of those activities. This year has really driven some significant change in our level of ambition, and I just want to quickly run through some of those. If I go back to December 2019, that was when we took a first step in increasing our ambition level around climate change. This is where we made the commitment to achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 in line with the Paris Agreement.
But then shortly after that, into the new year, in February 2020, we followed this with a formal commitment to set our science-based targets with the Science Based Targets initiative. Then in March, we saw an announcement of our next three climate change goals, and I'll talk through those on the next slide. Through this, we're constantly changing and improving our disclosures as well. From the beginning of the process, we have been working to incorporate TCFD frameworks into our sustainability report. And so that's a key part that we've done with our recent sustainability report that was published a few months ago where we're starting to align to that TCFD framework. We're continuing to submit to CDP, and Jules announced that we have recently achieved an A- in the leadership category for our results there.
Also from a disclosure perspective, we continue to meet the NGERS Act obligations with the Australian government to disclose our greenhouse gas emissions. We're also working to improve our packaging, including the rebranding of our packaging, and to incorporate more sustainable materials. And as a result of this, we were recently nominated for a number of sustainability packaging awards. And I'm really pleased to say that we've actually very recently won two of those, which is a great achievement and links to one of the videos that we watched in the break there around how our packaging is being transformed. So I wanted to talk through just briefly around our three goals that we committed to in March around climate change. And so the first one is around reducing our absolute emissions.
This is the first absolute emissions reduction target that we've set as a business, and it's to achieve a 50% reduction by 2030 over the next 10 years. So this is really an important goal and a signal to the market that we're taking climate change seriously and transforming our business to adapt and doing our fair part to reduce emissions. We're working to achieve that through a range of activities, including increasing investment in our energy efficiency program, through advancements in new technology, and also building climate change considerations into our long-term business planning as well as the progressive decarbonization of the electricity grid as the uptake of renewables grows. Our second goal is around being renewable energy leaders. This is about enabling renewable energy generation equivalent to 100% of our consumption. That's over the next 5 years.
This really feeds on our investments in power purchase agreements to date with our Murra Warra solar farm, wind farm, and Emerald solar farm that are generating renewable energy and feeding into the electricity grid. Then the third goal is actually recognizing that we have a climate change impact at the moment. As we work to reduce our emissions over the next 10 years, we want to neutralize the emissions that we have right now. So that's to go carbon neutral in our operations. Very excited to say that we achieved our carbon neutral certification this year in July.
So just quickly on that, that was a really significant milestone that we achieved going from announcing our carbon neutral commitment in March to actually achieving it in July. So we moved very quickly, but it's important to note that we didn't start from scratch with this.
In December of last year, our challenger brand, Belong, became the first Australian carbon neutral telecommunications company. So we had a good base to work on from that and some learnings on how we could apply it for Telstra as an organization. We chose to work through Climate Active, the government organization who certifies carbon neutral, to ensure that the offsetting of the emissions from our operations were undertaken transparently using appropriate carbon credits. We're also certified by a reputable organization. Although we had experience calculating our emissions profile, purchasing carbon credits at this scale was absolutely a new activity for Telstra.
So there's many different types of carbon credits available, and we have set up an evaluation framework to ensure the appropriate governance that we're purchasing reputable and suitable credits for us to meet our operations and to meet our carbon neutral certification.
So we undertake a due diligence process on those carbon credits that we purchase, and that's very much aligned to our Supplier Code of Conduct and also some enhanced due diligence procedures around investigating where the credits are coming from and the governance in place for those. And once the credits that we're looking into meet that requirement, we then try and maximize the co-benefits of those credits. And that might be things like ensuring that we are purchasing credits from the countries in which we operate or that are aligned to addressing significant impacts or opportunities for Telstra as well.
So, for example, credits that are coming from renewable energy generation projects or also that might be related to biodiversity or investing in rural and regional areas or supporting indigenous communities. And so our approach to this will continue to evolve over time.
But very importantly, we need to continue to build on that and to work with the carbon offset community to ensure we're buying reputable credits. And so thanks, everyone, for listening on the climate change and environment piece. Look forward to any further questions through the Q&A.
Thanks, Tom. For Q&A, remember to answer your questions below this screen. So the first question we've got here is, how have you reduced greenhouse gas emissions this year, and will you continue to maintain carbon neutral certification each year?
Thanks, Will. So we've actually increased our energy efficiency program over the FY2020, and so that's involved us investing further around HVAC system upgrades, lighting upgrades, but really scaling up our work around decommissioning some of our older equipment that's running in our exchanges and replacing that with more energy-efficient equipment. And so that's actually contributed to us reducing our overall greenhouse gas emissions by around 5% over the last year, which is roughly in line with what we need to achieve as part of our 2030 commitment. In terms of our carbon neutral certification, that's absolutely something that we're looking to achieve year on year. And in theory, as we reduce our emissions over time, then the amount that we have to certify with offsets to go carbon neutral will reduce over time as well.
Great. Thanks, Tom. Next question is, how are you helping other organizations on their carbon neutral journey?
Yeah. There's a few different ways that we're doing this. One of them is actually around ensuring that we're providing more low-carbon products and services to our customers. And that might be through ensuring that our modems that we provide are more energy-efficient or our cloud computing services can save money. But on the carbon neutral place, we actually went through a huge learning with going through our carbon neutral certification. And recently, we helped St. Vincent de Paul Society Victoria on their own carbon neutral journey, providing advice through the process and also allowing them to get more access to reputable credits that we'd also reviewed.
The next question, how much will it cost to achieve your climate goals? Will you make further investments in PPAs?
Absolutely. So we're still working on the plans for our full 2030 emissions reduction targets. So the exact figures are not sort of we haven't worked those out to that level of detail. But what I can talk about is, over the last nine years, we've invested around AUD 61 million in energy efficiency upgrades. And so that's a decent scale and a marker around what's needed to achieve our commitments. Absolutely, our plans are to invest in more PPAs, and that's very much part of our renewable energy target and commitment. So at the moment, we have two of those, and we'll be looking to do more over time.
Great. Thanks, Tom. A couple more questions. What are your plans for TCFD quantitative reporting?
We're on the TCFD journey, and so our last sustainability report began to align some of our TCFD requirements and frameworks into that piece. And so we've begun with some of the qualitative work and aligning those two pieces. I think it's a multi-year journey for us, though. And so you'll begin to see over time more of the quantitative analysis come into the reports.
Great. And the final question we've got here, what are the TCFD risks you are managing currently?
There's a lot of work within the business to understand more around climate change risks, and that includes both physical and transition risks associated with climate change. That covers everything from physical risks related to fibre strain on the network from really hot days or increased energy costs through cooling when we have hot days or flooding or more extreme weather events like bushfires. Those things are all being factored into our long-term analysis.
Okay. Thanks, Tom. And that's all the questions we have for Q&A. So that concludes our deep dives into our key sustainability topics. Before we wrap things up, I want to take you through our sustainability and ESG engagement for calendar year 2021. As we have done in the past, we'll continue to provide regular updates on our sustainability approach and performance throughout the year. Our next form of sustainability engagement will be through our annual ESG survey in January, followed by the release of our FY2021 sustainability report in August and our FY2021 modern slavery statement in September.
We are planning our next roundtable to be around this time next year. We also publish a quarterly newsletter, Sustainability Matters. Please let us know if you'd like to be on that distribution list. And you can also find out more on our sustainability website at telstra.com/sustainability/report.
Of course, we are available to engage on sustainability issues throughout the year during our investor meetings. In the meantime, if you have any questions or queries on topics we covered or didn't cover today, please get in touch with us. We welcome your questions and feedback, and are happy to help wherever we can. Thank you for joining us today and for your participation. We hope you found the roundtable useful, and we look forward to engaging with you on Sustainability Matters in the coming year. Have a nice day.