Felix Mobile: The Telco With Green Values

In late 2020, the seed of felix was planted in Australia by a close-knit team of humans at TPG Telecom who came together with one mission in mind: to offer a mobile phone service that would do better by their people, and just as importantly, the planet too. Offering one simple plan, the digital-only subscription is reducing its footprint in more ways than one.

After discovering that mobile phone plans in Australia contribute over 1,000,000+ tonnes of CO2 per year, which is the same as 386,000 passenger cars being on the road for a year, the Felix Mobile team knew they had to offer something better.

So, they came up with a plan. To do right by their customers by doing right by the planet. They do this by offering one plan at one affordable price, being digital all the way, by pushing the boundaries on what a mobile service can offer and always keeping the planet front of mind.

Guided by nature, felix is proud to be:

• Planting trees on behalf of every customer monthly through One Tree Planted
• Certified carbon neutral through Australian government-backed initiative, Climate Active
• The first telco brand in Australia to be powered by 100% renewable electricity

Planting Trees Worldwide

Their mission? To plant one million trees around the world in the places that need it the most, with their tree planting journey kickstarting at launch when they donated 15,000 seedlings to local nurseries in Australia to help with the recovery efforts of the devastating bushfires in 2019.

Further to that, for just having an active felix subscription, they’re contributing one tree per customer for each month they’re active to ensure that thousands of trees are planted per year through One Tree Planted. felix’s chosen project for 2020 was the mangroves of Sarangani Bay and Tambobo Bay in The Philippines, where the area used to be covered by over 500,000 hectares of mangroves, but over the last century has dramatically declined to less than half of that. In 2021, felix is focusing on planting trees in the wonderful Polylepis forests of The Andes, South America where the trees planted will help restore wetlands, safeguard existing forest, and protect critical Amazon headwaters.

Reducing Emissions

But it doesn’t stop there. The data centres and network that power their phones use electricity which causes carbon emissions. It is so significant that being powered by 100% renewable electricity was also extremely important to the felix team at launch.

They achieve this by purchasing renewable electricity certificates (also known as RECs) in Australia to cover the power used in providing the service, and at the same time invest in certified carbon offset projects to offset all remaining emissions caused by the running of the network and the emissions caused by the day-to-day running of the business. This ultimately reduces the amount of harmful greenhouse gases that are released, while leaving more fossil fuels in the ground, unburned.