Our Impact

We continue to reduce our direct environmental impact. Our strategy is to:

• Measure and report our impacts and CO2 emissions in accordance with DEFRA, ISO14064, the Carbon Disclosure Project and Greenhouse Gas guidelines;
• Set targets for reducing environmental impact;
• Improve energy efficiency, waste disposal, travel practices and resource use in our buildings and business processes;
• Offset remaining CO2 emissions in countries achieving the previous steps.

We continue to set ourselves a range of stretching targets achieving 73% including our Group-wide target to reduce CO2 emissions by 2.5%. Our Scandinavian operations have set targets for completion in 2010. Achieving these targets is helping drive cost reductions across the Group as well as reducing our environmental impacts.

We made good progress towards achieving our UK air travel and Canadian electricity targets with over a 4% reduction.

We offset the remaining UK carbon dioxide emissions by investing in renewable energy projects and this means we have been “carbon neutral” in the UK since 2006. In 2008, we began offsetting emissions in Ireland, which is now also carbon neutral, taking our offsets to 55% of Group-wide emissions. We offset CO2 emissions through investment in renewable energy projects in India that comply with the robust, internationally recognised Voluntary Carbon Standard (www.v-c-s.org).

Our biggest impact is through the energy we use in our offices and travel, and the resulting carbon dioxide emissions. Air travel is relatively minor despite the Group’s growing international presence and is less than emissions from road travel.

Over half of Group emissions are in the UK, principally from electricity used in offices. Half of UK electricity comes from combined heat and power and other lower-carbon sources. Group head office uses renewable energy.

Absolute CO2 emissions are not comparable over time because we have extended the data to cover additional countries, including CNS in Canada in 2008. UK emissions (which are 53% of the total) have fallen by approximately 20% in the past five years.

Energy

Energy consumption fell across the Group during 2008, with our UK business seeing a drop of over 10,000 MWh, a total cost saving of nearly a million pounds. The inclusion of countries across the Emerging Markets business largely offset any major decrease in absolute emissions.

Travel

In 2008, business travel (including road, air and rail) accounted for approximately 40% of our total carbon footprint. We seek to reduce the environmental impact of business travel by:

• Encouraging the use of video and teleconferencing;
• Increasing the monitoring of travel spending and raising employee awareness of travel policies;
• Selecting more fuel efficient cars when we upgrade our vehicle fleet.

Resource Use

As an office based organisation, paper use is a key environmental impact. Our paper use increased in 2008, largely due to the inclusion of data from Emerging Markets.

We aim to reduce paper use by communicating with customers and shareholders electronically, for example through electronic billing, while continuing to meet our legal obligations.

Water

Consumption has decreased in 2008. Consolidation of buildings and the introduction of water minimisation techniques such as low flush technology have had an impact.

Waste

Across the Group we continue to increase the accuracy of our waste data through our supplier agreements and reduce the amount of estimated data.