Sustainability Forum 2026: shaping the next steps for CSR together
For the second year running, Orange’s CSR community came together in September 2026, both at Bridge, the Group’s headquarters, and remotely.
More than an annual event, the Sustainability Forum reflects our long-term commitment to society, the planet, and people, including vulnerable groups and our customers.
The day combined inspiring initiatives, shared best practices, and forward-looking round tables. It was an opportunity to look back at 15 years of change driven by CSR across our business and the way we work, while also looking ahead to the challenges of the coming years.
Franck Wodié (Orange Money Group) and Noumbe Ba (CSR, Sonatel Orange)
CSR is a collective effort across the business
A service designed with and for street delivery workers and entrepreneurs with disabilities in Senegal. A mobile service designed to better protect minors in Belgium. An intelligent battery system that helps manage energy use across telecom infrastructure.
Presented at the Sustainability Forum, these projects show what CSR looks like in practice. It’s changing our products and services, our networks, how technology is used, and the choices we make. By becoming part of everyday business and decision-making, CSR encourages us to think differently, adapt solutions to what our customers need, and change the way we work.
More and more employees are getting involved because these issues reflect their own values too. The Forum gave people a chance to compare experiences, find new ideas and support, and leave with fresh impetus to keep driving change.
CSR isn’t something you can simply impose. It moves forward when everyone brings it to life. Progress comes through collective action, collaboration across the business, and our ability to change our models. The Sustainability Forum reflects that shared energy. Combined with the strength of our new strategic plan, Trust the future, it can help transform Orange for the long term and build a more sustainable and ethical digital world.
CSR in action
The numbers also show how far we’ve come. Over the past 15 years, we’ve achieved many of our CSR goals. And we’re not stopping there. Trust the future sets new targets for 2030: reducing greenhouse gas emissions across Scopes 1, 2, and 3 by 45%; providing free digital support and training to 6 million people; and making digital protection services available in 100% of our countries.
CSR: measuring our impact
Year after year, our CSR commitments are translated into concrete, measurable, and sustainable progress.
Communication is never neutral. At Orange, we have a responsibility to manage our impact, because every word and every image carries weight. Communicating responsibly means rejecting practices that undermine trust and choosing transparency, even when it’s difficult. It also means using our influence for the common good and encouraging responsible digital practices.
CSR says a lot about the role a company wants to play in society. It can’t be something bolted on to make a business look greener: it has to be central to the company and its strategy. Businesses that genuinely integrate it into the way they operate are also the ones that improve their economic and financial performance. That’s the business vision people will remember.
AI: the new challenge for responsible CSR
It’s impossible to talk about CSR in 2026 without looking at the environmental and societal questions raised by AI. One question ran through the discussions at the Sustainability Forum: is AI a threat, or can it become a force for progress for individuals, society, and the environment?
At Orange, we believe in AI that’s responsible, ethical, efficient, transparent, and useful. But innovation can only move forward if we set clear boundaries around how AI is used.
Practical applications are already showing that this balance is possible. In Morocco, AI skills are being shared more widely to support social inclusion and entrepreneurship. Elsewhere, AI is being used to make customer materials more accessible, help designers and marketers develop products and services, and protect businesses against deepfakes. Internally, the Carbon Value Navigator helps teams choose the most resource-efficient AI solution for each project.
Chantal Joie La Marle on stage with the Orange speaker
AI forces us to make some uncomfortable trade-offs between economic performance, environmental impact, and social progress. Innovating responsibly means acknowledging those tensions, measuring the consequences of our choices, and setting clear boundaries around how AI is used. Protecting data, preserving our strategic autonomy, developing skills and, above all, basing decision-making around people not tech: that’s how innovation and responsibility can move forward together.
It’s up to us to make sure AI remains, above all, what we choose to make of it: aligned with our values, moving in a positive direction environmentally and socially, with clear boundaries around its use and a clear understanding of its impact. Our responsibility and challenge is to develop, or at least preserve, what makes us human: our judgment, our ability to act together and learn, and our creativity. We also need to find new ways to work together in the age of AI, without ever losing sight of our ability to make our own decisions.
