Our International Board endorses our environmental strategy and provides the leadership and support to the local operational teams, environmental co-ordinators and environmental champions and representatives. This has helped to reduce our environmental impacts.
Following the establishment of our global environmental policy in 2008, and the accreditation of our UK Environmental Management System to the international standard ISO 14001, we have continued to implement a global structure to support local offices to monitor and manage our environmental impacts more effectively. Every office provides data to monitor and measure their progress and is involved in responsibly managing their environmental impacts.
In 2011, we agreed and launched the UK Operations Sustainable Procurement Policy. This policy will enhance our procurement decisions, taking into account the environmental, social and economic impacts of what we buy. We recognise the importance of responsible supply chain management and the impacts purchasing can have to affect positive change, as reflected in our Global Environmental Policy. We will continue to look for ways to improve our performance.
Investing for the future
A year on and the benefits of our two main investments in energy efficiency have come to fruition.
Our investment in technology which centrally wakes up and powers down our global PC stock has resulted in us experiencing a 19% decrease in the energy use of our PCs - the equivalent greenhouse gas emissions to fill 77 hot air balloons. There are still more changes we can make with this software and are therefore expecting further reductions over the coming year.
To reduce the carbon emissions resulting from business travel, we invested in both Telepresence and high definition video conferencing in our London, Frankfurt, New York and Hong Kong offices, which has also delivered some significant cost savings. We estimate that the use of these facilities has avoided 1,900 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions which would have otherwise been created from flight miles.
