PwC 2011 Annual Report - Sustainability & community

Sustainability means rethinking how we create value for everyone – today and tomorrow. It means integrating sustainability into our client advice, and making sure we pioneer new approaches in our own operations.

Sustainability is an area where clients are increasingly coming to us for support.

New sustainability services

To meet this growing client demand, we’ve invested in new sustainability and climate change services, with three key areas of focus: climate change, ecosystem services and social equity. The results are already impressive:

• We led the establishment of the Climate and Development Knowledge Network (CDKN). This is a joint venture between ourselves and five non-governmental organisations funded by the UK Department for International Development and the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. CDKN works in partnership with decision-makers in support of locally owned and managed policy processes to design and deliver climate-compatible development in the countries that need it most.
• Since playing a key role in the launch of The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity report earlier this year, we’ve helped the World Business Council for Sustainable Development to create a toolkit for valuing ecosystem services – such as fresh water, food and fibre – and PUMA to pioneer the world’s first environmental profit and loss account.
• In line with Millennium Development Goals, we’ve focused on helping clients to address their impacts on the socio-economic landscape.

Meeting the carbon challenge

Our own corporate sustainability performance in the UK has been mixed this year. We’ve achieved reductions in our energy and waste, but our total like-for-like carbon emissions have risen by 4.2%. This is partly because we now measure rail and water emissions, and partly as a result of an increase in air travel.

We’re working hard to make changes where we can, for example, encouraging our people to use video conferencing where possible. And we’ve been looking at ways to make it easy for our people to use sustainable travel options, such as electric vehicles and bicycles.

Still, our new building in More London sets the standard for a sustainable workplace. Its pioneering technology uses less energy than a typical structure of its size and sends none of its waste to landfill, and as a result we’re on track to meet the majority of our sustainability targets for next year.

The story of More London and our scorecard for this year’s performance metrics can be found at Corporate Sustainability at PwC.

Helping our communities

Our people are passionately involved in the community. Our UK volunteering hours and community investment are both up on last year. The total number of hours volunteered by our partners and staff during the year rose to more than 50,000 hours from a little under 42,500 hours in 2010. We’re proud of this performance and will be challenging ourselves to do even more in the year to come.