A very good idea and I hope other large coporations will follow suite, however this comment spoilt it a bit and could be taken as all Telstra cares about........"better value for shareholders."

Thanks for your comment Robert. Turning off screen savers is one initiative we are taking at Telstra to reduce energy and greenhouse gas emissions. In fact up to 2006-07, Telstra delivered total (i.e. cumulative) savings of over a 170,000 tonnes of greenhouse emissions (or CO2e). To put this in perspective, this is equalvent to the emissions profile of a regional Australian city. I don't think Phil's comment "reducing the environmental impact of Telstra’s operations is an efficient use of resources and provides better value for shareholders" spoils the screensaver story at all. The fact is that if a company has a clear focus on reducing its environmental impact, and consciously looks for these opportunities (for resource conservation) and integrates them into business planning and the way it does is business, then it will reduce its costs and therefore deliver increased shareholder value. And Telstra is doing that. More than that, Telstra is also delivering solutions to customers that can enable them to reduce their own greenhouse gas emissions. That will also increase shareholder value particularly as Australia enters into an economy (post 2010 assuming the Emissions Trading Schemes starts then) where there will be a price on greenhouse gas emissions. Perhaps also of interest to you is that for the past 2 years Telstra has been recognised by the world's largest group of investors, through the Carbon Disclosure Project, as a Climate Leader in our region. Environmental performance and shareholder value, are intrinsically linked - whether it be an internal energy saving action or delivering high definintion video conferencing through a high speed NBN to reduce our customer's travel emissions (and thier travel bills!). Perhaps the linkage is not always immediately evident but the underlying principles of stewardship and conservation are at work in business just as the laws of gravity are. When there is a price on greenhouse gas emissions, the linkage will be come more evident and investors will (as they are beginning to now) look even closer at putting greater stock in lower-carbon investments. Dr. Turlough Guerin, Group Manager Environment, Telstra.

I certainly believe that Telstra is doing the right thing with implementing this policy and this falls inline with the recently launched Computers Off Australia campaign that was officially launched on the 30th June 2008. The objectives of the non-for-profit ‘Computers Off’ campaign is to form part of a new development of practical programs being offered by the Information and Communication Technologies industry to improve energy efficiency and deal with issues around global climate change. The Computers Off campaign is a simple, yet important initiative which is designed to educate home users, business and government about how we can all help reduce Australia’s carbon footprint by implementing virtualisation and power management practices on our home and work computers. The Computers off ‘label’ has been created as the computer industry’s guide to help business, government and individuals quickly and easily identify organisations that are doing their part to reduce their power consumption and in turn reducing their CO2 emissions. This initiative also supports an industry-wide target to achieve a 50 per cent improvement in Australia’s and global computer energy efficiency by 2010. More information can be found at www.computersoff.org.