Our Responsibilities Operational impacts

We are working hard to reduce the overall environmental footprint of our offices, aided by a refurbishment project at our head office in Watford which built environmental concerns into its design.

We are working hard to reduce the overall environmental footprint of our offices, aided by a refurbishment project at our head office in Watford which built environmental concerns into its design.

Investing in efficiency – Watford head office
Our head office refurbishment project incorporated energy-saving and other sustainable features into its design:

Movement and daylight-sensitive lighting
Space planning to make the most of natural light
Better cycling facilities
Video conferencing to reduce business travel
Voltage optimiser to reduce power load into the building
Low-flush WCs
Timed flow mixer spray taps
Footprint trackers, which allow us to capture and display real-time energy performance in different zones of the building, highlighting where waste was occurring.

Engaging our staff
This year we engaged staff in environmental issues by:

• Supporting Climate Week by running a competition for staff to reduce their personal environmental footprint

• Installing video conferencing facilities and so that staff can cut down business travel

• Carrying out a travel survey to find out how people get to work. We are now looking at ways to help our employees travel in more sustainable ways

• Inviting comedian and environmental campaigner Marcus Brigstocke as a guest speaker to our Head Office to discuss his expeditions to climate change ‘hot spots’ on the Cape Farewell project.

Office Paper
We have saved more than 280,000 sheets of office paper through the installation of new multi-function devices which print, scan and photocopy in our offices. These save energy and reduce our paper consumption through double-sided default printing and a swipe card function to reduce unwanted print outs. 

Distribution centre
We extended our distribution centre’s health and safety auditing programme to incorporate energy- and waste-management. A number of issues have already been identified, such as energy used out-of-hours and improvements to waste segregation practices.

We will continue to make environmental improvements at the distribution centre throughout 2011/12.

Looking Forward
We have made good progress towards the goals set out in our five year strategy to reduce environmental impacts by 2013.

Our plans for the future are centred on a continuing commitment to reduce our environmental footprint alongside our ambitions for growth and diversification.
We will carry on with the work we have done to enable and encourage our employees to embrace high standards of environmental stewardship, while continuing to improve the environmental footprints of the offices in which they work.
We will also focus on the products and marketing material we create, reducing their impact and designing better systems to reduce waste.