| Sustainability at ERM | Many of our clients are taking a bolder approach to defining what sustainability means for their business. In parallel we have established a steering committee to reinvigorate our own commitments and develop a unified, global sustainability strategy. Over the next year this program will establish a clear vision and appropriate performance goals, and ensure that our corporate sustainability commitments are embedded in all aspects of our organization.
Measuring our Environmental Performance
This year, we launched an internal project to improve the measurement of our environmental performance and agree on proposals for our environmental strategy. The first stage of this has been successfully completed, facilitated by the development of a tool called Global Environmental Indicators for ERM (GENIE). GENIE provides a rigorous methodology for the collection and analysis of environmental data from our 145 offices around the world.
It includes a comprehensive range of indicators, including greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from buildings and travel, as well as monitoring water use, waste production and recycling. The tool has been used office-by-office across 41 countries to generate robust data sets for measuring our environmental footprint. In 2007 our total estimated GHG emissions were 15,400t CO2e or 4.5t CO2e per employee (metric tons). Around 50% of our total GHG emissions were from business travel, of which 28% was attributable to air travel.
Other key performance metrics for 2007 include:
- 70% of our offices used paper with some recycled content.
- 176t (metric tons) of paper, plastic, glass and metals were recycled.
There is considerable variation in the performance of our offices and we will be using office ranking tables to identify priorities for improvement in the coming year.
Reducing our Carbon Footprint
Over 25% of our offices around the world have set up “Green Office Teams” to help identify actions to reduce their environmental footprint. This has led to a number of initiatives such as securing contracts for environmentally-friendly and fuel-efficient rental cars, procurement of equipment based on energy ratings, “Cycle to Work” plans providing interest free loans to purchase bikes, carpooling in areas where there is no public transportation, as well as recycling or donating equipment such as computers and mobile phones.
Supporting Low Carbon Enterprises
We will continue to provide administrative support to the activities of the ERM Foundation not-for-profit organization and its Low Carbon Enterprise Fund. In 2007 we provided US$200,000 of pro-bono technical support for low carbon enterprises in the developing world, a value equivalent to the external offsetting of our carbon footprint.
ERM Foundation
This was an important year for the ERM Foundation. We supported a wide range of organizations and projects around the world. To strengthen our Low Carbon Initiative we appointed a Director and agreed a strategy to enable us to further the goal of the ERM Foundation in coming years.
Our Strategy
In January around 20 ERM consultants and Partners, from different stages in their careers, met in Miami to discuss the future of the ERM Foundation. As a result, we established some ambitious goals in terms of future fundraising to enable us to provide more support to environmental and sustainable development causes. We also reaffirmed the role of the ERM Foundation and the need to engage all of our staff. Finally, we identified opportunities to further develop our links with external organizations, including clients, that have similar goals.
The ERM Foundation in Action
The ERM Foundation provides an opportunity for ERM staff to work together with colleagues and contribute personally to the environment and sustainable development.
In our offices around the world, we have many examples of our staff’s commitment to the ERM Foundation. These activities include volunteer efforts such as costal cleanups, helping with environmental education, undertaking a wide range of fundraising activities and providing donations and advice for local or global environmental and sustainable development projects.
ERM, the company, provides up to US$200,000 each year to match contributions raised by our own staff. This money is then allocated to projects that have been identified by our offices around the world.
Supporting Low Carbon Enterprises
As part of ERM’s Low Carbon Initiative, ERM donated around 250 days of consultants’ time to the ERM Foundation’s pro-bono program. This has enabled the ERM Foundation to offer pro-bono technical and managerial advice to entrepreneurs, non-government organizations and other groups on different types of low carbon projects. ERM sees this as an effective way of leveraging its expertise and as a sustainable alternative to offsetting.
The Foundation’s pro-bono program has assessed and advised on rain forest sustainability initiatives in Guyana and Indonesia, a student program to measure office CO2 emissions in Shanghai, small solar businesses in Nigeria and India and a micro-hydro project in East Africa.
The Foundation has also provided financial support in the form of loans and equity stakes to entrepreneurs where these businesses will result in a reduction of CO2 emissions. These include a solar lamp business in Nepal, sustainable livelihoods project in Guyana, biofuels enterprise in Madagascar and sustainable forestry business in Ecuador.
We are very grateful to the individuals and organizations that have donated to the Low Carbon Enterprise Fund.
To read more about the projects the ERM Foundation
is supporting please go to www.erm.com/foundation.
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