Climate change and the environment

Topic	Progress in 2007/2008	Targets & commitments 2009/2010
Climate change	We achieved a 4.6 per cent reduction in our carbon emissions (per person) largely as a result of reduced electricity usage firmwide. This is short of our target of a 10 per cent reduction by April 2008, due mainly to the increase in business travel as a result of our growing business in Africa, Asia, and South America, and the establishment of two new offices in the Middle East. We were again certified CarbonNeutral® and are supporting offset projects in Germany, India, the Netherlands and Turkey. The German and Turkish projects were chosen via a firmwide staff vote – over 2,600 people participated in the 2008 vote. We have appointed a new energy manager in our London office. Several offices have undertaken energy audits, and our new office in Tokyo has been equipped with eco-efficiency in mind.	Continue to reduce our carbon emissions and set further targets. (We are revising our 10 per cent target in the light of the changes to carbon reporting guidelines by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra)). Continue to introduce energy-efficient schemes and look at ways of optimising building energy performance.
Resource use	Reduced electricity usage by over 2m kilowatts over 2007/2008. Our offices in Brussels, Milan and Rome switched to low-carbon energy supplies in 2008. In London, 85 per cent of our electricity supply comes from renewable sources (and has done since 2004). Our offices in Belgium, Germany, the UK and the US all encourage people to use recycled paper.	Continue to reduce our electricity use. Continue to reduce the amount of paper we use and change our paper sources to recycled paper. Conduct a review of our water usage and see how we can reduce waste across our offices.
Business travel	Our business travel increased as a result of our growing international business. We have seen increased use in web conferencing and continue to encourage people to use our video conferencing services. Our events teams are working to change the way we organise our external and internal conferences to help us achieve our aims.	Continue to increase the use of video and telephone conferencing. Reduce non-essential air travel. We will be strengthening our existing travel policy in 2009.
Management systems	Prioritisation of our carbon reduction commitment meant that we did not make much progress on the introduction of an ISO (International Organization for Standardization) programme for London. We expect to pilot this in our London office in 2009.	Implement an ISO environment programme for each office, starting with London.
Advocacy and engagement	Became founding members of Legal Sector Alliance on sustainability and climate change. Participated in BITC's May Day Network – a group of companies committed to tackling climate change. Staff voted to elect an environmental charity to support during 2007/2008. This resulted in £40,000 being raised for WaterAid's work in Mozambique. Several offices supported activities around UN World Environment Day. We continue to produce regular e-bulletins, and work with business departments and our green teams, looking at ways to reduce our impact. We now have green guides in Italy, Spain and Vietnam, in addition to London.	Continue to engage in industry and multi-stakeholder initiatives to tackle climate change. Continue to engage our employees in fundraising for an environmental charity as part of our firmwide e-card.