Green growth: the future of environmental policies, products and CSR reporting were the focus of a round-table debate hosted by FM.
| Author | Prickett, Ruth |
| Position | THE GREEN GAMEPLAN in association with the Carbon Trust |
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What are your roles and how do your organizations deal with green issues?
Bruno Zago, environmental manager, UK and Ireland, Hewlett-Packard: We have reported on our environmental performance for about four years. One of the key things we're looking at now is the fact that we have a lot of data for our internal operations and products, so we are concentrating on the environmental performance of our supply chain. HP is the first in its sector to announce emissions data associated with its largest suppliers, representing more than 80 per cent of its costs for materials, manufacturing and assembly of its products worldwide.
Mike Ayres, business development director, Easynet: I'm the executive sponsor for the environmental stuff within Easynet, which is part of Sky, so I work closely with the environmental team at Sky and across News Corp. Sky has been reporting on CSR for a number of years but Easynet started two and a half years ago. The Sky side is fairly well developed and we're now looking to share some of our actions and ideas around the broader business.
We report at a company level and the key thing for us is how we extend that not only to the business units but to the subdivisions in those units, so there is more accountability at lower levels. We've been carbon neutral for just over two years and I work with our larger clients to see whether we can share ideas.
Mark Gough, environment and health and safety co-ordinator, Reed Elsevier: Reed Elsevier is an information provider that traditionally published products in paper format, but has been moving towards online provision with a target of 70 per cent of revenue from online services. We've been providing data on our environmental impact since 2003 and it is externally verified, so we've been able to identify trends and develop approaches to improve our impact.
Helen Gordon, property director, life fund, Legal and General Property: L&G owns five per cent of the FTSE on behalf of its policyholders. We challenge these companies on their environmental and social responsibility agendas, so we have to keep our own house in order. We have about 13bn [pounds sterling] in property under management and, since property has such a big environmental impact, that comes under the spotlight.
Our investors aren't challenging us yet, but they will soon, so to deal with this we've taken a different approach. There is no one person responsible for environmental issues here--every fund manager is responsible for their environmental policies. I'm the least popular person in the office because I'm telling all our fund managers that they need to get qualified to understand environmental issues, it's a huge task. We've set up a course with the College of Estate Management that our managers must attend in their own time to learn the issues surrounding property and the environment.
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Andy Togher, director of business relations, the Carbon Trust: We're largely funded by the government and our mission is to work with organisations to reduce their carbon emissions and energy use, and also to develop commercial low-carbon technologies. We work with thousands of companies every year to reduce their energy costs and carbon emissions and help them to plan their responses to regulation.
We have a think-tank that seeks to influence government and clarify issues--the idea for the carbon-reduction commitment (CRC) came from us, for example. Another of our business areas helps to develop new technologies and through that we've gained expertise in growing new businesses through incubators, seed funding and venture capital. Out of that we've grown our own investment business and we're starting to bring in money from sources such as sovereign wealth funds and others interested in energy developments. We're identifying low-carbon businesses that we can start with private-sector funding in order to grow and eventually sell them.
We're...
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