Environmental policy statement
As an international law firm, we know that we have a role to play in mitigating our impact on the climate crisis through the way that we operate our business. We are committed to taking action to reduce our environmental and carbon footprint through a programme of continual improvement, ensuring we comply with our environmental legal, regulatory, and voluntary requirements at a minimum and implementing environmental management best practices into our operations where possible.
We have identified our most significant environmental risks and opportunities which we can control or influence in the pursuit of protecting the environment and preventing pollution. These include our contribution to climate change; our generation and disposal of waste; our use of raw materials and natural resources; and our procurement of goods and services.
We are committed to taking action across the following key impact areas:
Carbon footprint: Reducing our greenhouse gas emissions using energy and resources in the most efficient and cost-effective way, purchasing energy from renewable sources and tariffs where available and choosing lower impact products and services where possible.
Energy efficiency: Continuing to explore and implement opportunities for improving the energy efficiency and performance of our buildings, monitoring and reporting on our energy use annually as a minimum.
Waste management: Managing the waste generated from our operations, following the waste hierarchy (prevent, reduce, reuse, recycle and recovery) and promoting the adoption of the circular economy principles (eliminate waste and pollution, circulate products and materials, and regenerate nature).
Business travel: Minimising the need for business travel by promoting the adoption of virtual meeting technology, and where this is not possible, encourage the use of less polluting forms of transport and travel.
Procurement: Taking environmental, carbon and other responsible sourcing criteria into account when engaging with our supply chain, with a view to begin calculating, reporting and reducing our Scope 3 carbon emissions associated with our procurement of goods and services.
Premises: Giving due consideration to environmental, sustainability and energy performance criteria when acquiring, designing, refurbishing, or relocating our premises.
To achieve this, we will:
Govern: Provide our Strategic Board and Management Committee with oversight of our environmental policies and performance to ensure there are sufficient resources available to allow us to deliver on our priorities and commitments.
Manage: Implement an environmental management system, which meets the international standard requirements of ISO 14001, setting and monitoring our performance against key objectives and targets, with a view to delivering continuous improvement.
Engage: Communicate the importance of environmental issues with our people, engaging with, and reporting to, relevant internal and external stakeholders, including our clients where appropriate.
Review: Ensure our environmental policies and priorities are reviewed and updated regularly, taking into account the views of our stakeholders and other interested parties as applicable.
Sara Bailey
Senior Partner, February 2024
This policy will be made available to our employees via our intranet and other interested parties upon request.