Few other brands hold such a unique and privileged place at the heart of people's homes as Sky. We recognise that with that position comes responsibility - to our customers, to society at large, and to the physical environment.
We care about the issues our customers care about, and we view it as our corporate responsibility to help address these concerns. This is not about pretending to do something for the sake of giving subscribers and investors a warm and fuzzy feeling - Sky is making a real and committed effort to make a positive difference.
Our efforts are broad and multifaceted.
Long-running programmes focus on using our unique profile as a broadcaster to inspire young people. They range from Living for Sport, a project run in one in every seven schools in the UK, which uses the power of sport to engage and inspire young people who are at risk of dropping out of education, to our involvement with Reach for the Sky, which offers young journalists a taste of what it is like to work in the media.
But corporations have a wider responsibility. We know our customers care about the environment and that global warming is becoming an increasingly important area of concern. One of our proudest achievements this year is to have become the first major media company and one of the first FTSE 100 to achieve carbon neutral status.
To become carbon neutral, we have assessed our emissions and worked to reduce them wherever possible. These initiatives include installing automatic lighting sensors in our buildings and purchasing power from renewable sources.
Going carbon neutral means that as well as reducing the amount of energy we use in the first place, we off set our remaining, unavoidable emissions. We have purchased carbon offsets in two renewable energy offset projects through The CarbonNeutral Company.
Our efforts are making an impact closer to home than you may at first think. We have reduced the power consumption of our Sky boxes by half since they were first introduced. The fact that we have a presence in more than 8 million homes means this has contributed a great deal to our efforts. We want to assist our customers to make a difference, providing practical and inspiring ways to become better informed and more progressive about energy use.
Our corporate profile is evolving to reflect our growing commitments. We are ranked in both FTSE4Good and the Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes. We are also proud to be the only broadcasting company in the world to appear in the Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations index.
In addition to the environment, we are tackling areas that relate directly to our operations as the leading provider of multichannel entertainment in the UK.
We know how important Sky's parental control features are for families, and we've listened to the feedback we have received on this and improved the service further on our satellite and Sky services. In addition, Sky+ was the first personal video recorder to be protected with a PIN number, and parents can now restrict access to programmes based on ratings, remove channels from the electronic programme guide, and control pre-watershed playback of programmes already recorded on Sky+.
We also work hard to make Sky as accessible as possible for everyone. Our subtitling, signing and audio description features are highly-regarded, and they're supported by our customer service. And during the last year we've worked with Scope and Age Concern to develop two new remote controls for older customers and those with disabilities.