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Although the nature of our business means our direct impact on the environment is small compared to most businesses of our size, we are committed to reducing our environmental impact. We have both a publicly stated environment policy which we regularly review and a comprehensive set of performance targets in this area.
We have assessed our most significant impact areas as:
Travel is an essential part of our business, but where possible we encourage partners and staff to consider alternatives. Our policy specifically requires all travellers to reflect on the need for the journey. Video- and tele-conferencing are being promoted as an alternative to business travel and we have a programme to ensure all offices have these facilities by the end of this year and to upgrade the existing equipment in a number of locations.
Per capita business mileage was maintained this year at the same level as last year, and we achieved our target of securing a net per capita reduction in carbon emissions from business travel.
We have set a target this year to reduce air travel milage by 20% which we will support through an active staff engagement programme.
Our major target for energy management this year is to reduce overall consumption by 20% in buildings controlled by us, and 5% for those buildings we share, or which are under landlord control.
We also have targets to increase the quality of our data which currently contains a number of estimated figures. These improvements will assist us in managing our energy efficiency initiatives and targeting our efforts effectively.
Paper is possibly our most visible use of resource. Over the past year we have promoted the reduction of its use through initiatives including deployment of multi-function devices (MFDs) and setting copiers to default to double-sided printing.
We have recently deployed fully recycled paper for all our in house printing and copying.
We achieved our target for this year which was to achieve a net per capita reduction in paper consumption – reducing this by nearly 7 kilos per head.
Our target for this year is to reduce consumption by a further 2%.
Recent years have seen a significant reduction in the amount of waste sent to landfill, although this is beginning to increase once more.
This year we worked to better understand the full waste management cycle for our business. We now have improved data on our waste streams, and will develop an integrated waste strategy this year with a long term target of zero waste to landfill.
Disappointingly total waste generated has continued to rise over the past few years although the percentage recycled has risen significantly. We continue to work with our suppliers to reduce packaging and unnecessary waste in all of our business services, and also to raise awareness and improve access to recycling facilities for our people.
Our target for this year is to reduce total waste generated by 3%, and to reduce the total sent to landfill by 2 percentage points to 9% of total waste.
Following last years sourcing of renewable electricity for the buildings under our control, CO2 from air travel is our largest source of greenhouse gas emissions, and our greatest challenge in terms of making significant improvement.
Our target is to reduce overall CO2 emissions further. This target will be delivered through the significant targets set above to reduce both overall office energy consumption and business air travel – by far our largest contributors of CO2 emissions.
© 2008 PricewaterhouseCoopers. All rights reserved. PricewaterhouseCoopers refers to the network of member firms of PricewaterhouseCoopers International Limited, each of which is a separate and independent legal entity.
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