The relationships we have with member organisations and those that assist with benchmarking and providing external verification have become an essential part of how we can strive to manage our impacts better.
Memberships and accreditations
We are active executive members of the Legal Sector Alliance (LSA), an inclusive movement of law firms and organisations committed to working collaboratively to take action on climate change by reducing their carbon footprint and adopting environmentally sustainable practices. We are represented on the Leaders Group and the Taskforce and also sit on both the LSA Carbon Protocol and Employee Engagement working groups.
We are members of and are represented on the steering committee of the Islington Climate Change Partnership (ICCP). The 200 members of the ICCP have saved over 10,000 tonnes of carbon collectively since 2007.
For the first time this year, we reported our UK energy use and subsequent greenhouse gas emissions to the Environment Agency under the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) Energy Efficiency Scheme, the UK’s mandatory climate change and energy saving scheme.
We have continued to have our UK Environmental Management System certified to ISO 14001 and have recently undergone re-certification to the Carbon Trust Standard to ensure our greenhouse gas reporting is externally audited and verified. We are participants in the Business in the Community Mayday Network, a collaboration of nearly 3,000 businesses taking action on climate change and resource depletion, and were one of the 560 organisations who opted to report back and publically disclose our greenhouse gas emissions.
Our Paris office completed the Bilan Carbone® Method, a carbon emissions reporting tool which will provide an office carbon footprint making us the first law firm in France to achieve this.
Our New York office continues to participate in the American Bar Association - Environmental Protection Agency (ABA-EPA) Law Office Climate Challenge. The office has adopted best practices for office paper management. It has also received recognition as an Energy Star leader for implementing an energy management strategy and as a WasteWise partner for demonstrating commitment to waste reduction.
Our Hong Kong office is a WWF Gold member. It has joined WWF’s Low-carbon Office Operations Programme (LOOP), which commits businesses to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions from their office operations.
Awards
In January 2011, the London office was awarded a City of London Clean City Platinum award. In February 2011, we won the national Sustainable Cities Award for Responsible Waste Management. We also became the first business in London to achieve a BREEAM In-Use accreditation “Excellent” rating which verifies how sustainably our One Silk Street building is operated and managed.
