Back to blog overview

Sunrise Buyback – upgrade and save with a good conscience

As part of its sustainability strategy, Sunrise designs its products and services with sustainability in mind, thus contributing to the circular economy. The goal of the Buyback program is to buy back at least 20,000 devices (smartphones, tablets, smartwatches) from customers for reuse each year by 2025.

Séverine de Rougemont

July 19, 2023 . 3 minutes read

Our customers have long expected us to think long-term and offer environmentally friendly solutions. We want to live up to this aspiration by designing our products and services in a sustainable way and embedding our measures throughout the organization.

With Sunrise Buyback, new and existing Sunrise customers can sell their used mobile phones, tablets and smartwatches easily in any Sunrise shop and now also by phone (telesales) or online. The buyback value is credited to their next Sunrise bill, or applied as a discount when they purchase a new device. Alternatively, it can be credited to them as an upfront payment if they’re paying for a new device in installments. Existing Sunrise customers can sell their device to Sunrise even if they don’t purchase a new one.

With the Sunrise Buyback program now also including telesales and the online shop as sales channels, and the option for customers to send in their old device by post free of charge, Sunrise is making it even easier for customers to return and sell devices to Sunrise that are still in good working order. The returned devices will be refurbished and resold by a certified Swiss partner and any remaining data will be deleted. Devices that no longer work will be properly recycled.

For all the details about the Sunrise Buyback program, please visit the web page. The process for refurbishing devices is explained in the following video.

Environmental responsibility

Various studies1) show that many old smartphones are kept in drawers at home instead of being recycled. Reusing materials like plastic and metal reduces environmental emissions. With its updated Buyback program Sunrise is therefore demonstrating efficient resource management.

NOT AVAILABLE

Circular economy

Sunrise wants to enhance the ecological responsibility of its products and use materials more efficiently. We want to achieve this by recycling and refurbishing more and by improving existing return programs, such as Buyback, and in the process doing our bit to promote a circular economy.

The circular economy encompasses the full lifecycle of all products and materials, from where they originate as raw materials through to the way they are manufactured and used, and finally how they are reused or recycled. The objective of the circular economy is to consume as few resources as possible and ensure that the products and materials that are needed remain in circulation locally wherever possible.

Environmental sustainability goals

To avoid negative impacts on the environment and society, Sunrise designs its products and services to be as sustainable as possible. When it comes to Sunrise devices such as modems and set-top boxes, the focus is on durability, repairability and low power consumption. This also applies to the design and packaging, that are developed to be as environmentally friendly as possible. The award-winning Sunrise IPTV Box is one example of the success of these endeavors. Made of 85% recycled materials, it won the «Sustainability Award» presented by «Digital TV Europe» in 2020.

With our Buyback program, we aim to buy back at least 20,000 devices from our customers for reuse each year by 2025

Sunrise considers the sustainable use of resources and reduction of greenhouse-gas emissions to be major challenges for society at large, but also views them as an opportunity. Sunrise gets all the electricity it requires to meet its own needs from renewable energy sources. It will increase the energy efficiency of data transmission (kWh/TB) in its network continuously by 10% a year up to 2030 and will ensure that all its vehicles operate on electric power by 2030.

In addition to the goal set by the parent company Liberty Global of achieving net zero (Scope 1 & 2) by 2030, Sunrise has committed to contributing to a science-based and gradual reduction of greenhouse gases as part of the Science-Based Targets (SBT) initiative.

 1) Survey Recommerce/verkaufen.ch 20.10.2022 / Study by Zurich University of Applied Sciences and the Swiss online marketplace Ricardo on sustainable consumption in Switzerland, 04.10.2022

Recommended articles