Our Environmental Commitment

Prudent Stewardship of the Environment is a Continuing Commitment

Efficiency in the Field and Efficiency in the Home

Environmental awareness is not just a catchphrase; it is an integral part of our culture. Quite simply, practicing environmental stewardship is the right thing to do, showing respect for our communities and accountability to our stakeholders. In accordance with our values, we work in tandem with our communities to implement efficient business practices. We believe prudent environmental stewardship aligns with the operational efficiencies we continue to pursue throughout our organization, creating a win-win for customers and stakeholders. It also benefits our employees, many of whom live in communities we serve. In accordance with WOW!’s value of accountability, we are doing our part to make a difference in our day-to-day operations.

Our culture demands that we address the growing challenges presented by climate change. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), CO2 represents 65% of all global greenhouse gas emissions. Fossil fuel consumption is the primary source of CO2 emissions. We are a small company, but we are making a difference every day as we seek operational efficiencies in the field and in customers’ homes and businesses to ensure WOW! is doing its part to combat climate change. Some examples of our efforts to create a circular economy and reduce our carbon footprint are detailed below.

Being smarter with our vehicles

The US Department of Energy estimates that the combined idling from heavy-duty and light-duty vehicles wastes six billion gallons of fuel annually. Commercial vehicles represent half of that amount and generate thirty million tons of CO2 annually. As a company that deploys fleet vehicles, we know our efforts to optimize our fleet make a difference in reducing CO2 emissions. For fleet vehicles, we use software solutions to reduce idling and improve miles per gallon. We also use smart routing to optimize driving times for technicians, and we offer home garaging to our employees’ assigned fleet vehicles. This program allows us to reduce unnecessary driving to/from a WOW! facility at the beginning of a shift and helps keep our employees in the communities/neighborhoods where we provide services. We are able to reduce vehicle emissions by using our GPS service to dispatch our field employees directly from their home to their first appointment, and to ensure the last appointment of the day is close to their home whenever possible.

Vehicle maintenance is handled by qualified third-party maintenance providers that do all work offsite and follow strict standards and guidelines for proper disposal of waste and can more cost effectively and efficiently service our fleet of vehicles. Vehicle maintenance vendors, like all vendors we use, are carefully vetted to ensure they meet our rigorous standards and share our values.

To reduce miles driven and provide customers the option to easily install equipment without requiring a technician visit, we leverage shipping companies already making deliveries in our customers’ communities. In 2021, total items shipped to households increased by over 200% from 2020. We expect continued growth in self-installation moving forward, which reduces miles driven and maintenance expense for our vehicles, while also extending their useful life.

Efficiency in the office

Our spirit of service compels our workforce to be reliable, easy to work with and pleasantly surprising in customer interactions, and in internal day-to-day operations in the office. We expect all employees to make positive environmental decisions every day. As an organization, we support eco-friendly efforts large and small. We encourage employees to think green and act accordingly. We ask them to avoid unnecessary printing, unplug equipment not being used, use the Internet wisely to decrease data storage, and use the recycling bins in every one of our company offices. We expect a similar standard of excellence from our vendors and counterparties. The Belleview Tower corporate headquarters office we lease in Denver achieved LEED gold status in 2020 and is pursuing recertification status in 2022. WOW! decreased its real estate footprint by 59% in 2021, supported in part by our decision to transition to a hybrid work environment. According to calculations provided by CoolClimate, a University of California-Berkeley climate research initiative, this reduction resulted in a 26.4% reduction in WOW!’s CO2 emissions in 2021. We upgraded our office lighting to LED for efficiency and cost savings. Our headend facilities and data centers implemented new battery technology to make them more energy efficient.

WOW! also promotes responsible end-of-life management for products and hardware. We work with a third-party vendor to find buyers for all our discontinued or end-of-life customer premise equipment (CPE), and we responsibly harvest reusable parts and/or recycle CPE and other network equipment that cannot be resold.

Our transition to a hybrid work model (allowing a mixture of in-office and remote work) in 2022 further supports our commitment to the environment. Employee commute times and miles driven decreased during the pandemic and are expected to remain below pre-pandemic levels going forward, helping employees save on fuel expense and helping WOW! lower overall commute-related CO2 emissions. Based on overwhelming approval from our employees for a hybrid work structure, this is a true win-win outcome for both our employees and WOW!. As has been the case throughout the pandemic, our decision to return to and remain in the office environment will continue to be informed by our continued review of Covid-19 status reports, particularly as it relates to our service territories, adherence to recommended CDC standards, and the safety and well-being of our employees.

Efficiency in customers’ homes

One benefit of our broadband first strategy is energy efficiency. Our new WOW! tv+ set-top boxes have a fraction of our legacy equipment’s power needs. And our cloud-based DVR service draws less power than if we stored data on hard drives of customers’ set-top boxes. We encourage paperless billing statements for broadband customers by offering a discount to customers who choose to sign up, thereby reducing our paper consumption.