Environmental Policy and IS014001 Accreditation
Our work with Envolve, a Bath based charity aimed at promoting sustainable positive environmental practices to businesses, motivated us to raise awareness of environmental issues and introduce an Environmental Policy to address these issues in the workplace. We formed a Green Office Group to move this project forward and to ensure the Environmental Policy is maintained, developed and promoted across the firm.
Some of the Green initiatives introduced to date are:
- Purchasing only Fairtrade tea, coffee and sugar
- Paper reduction and recycling schemes
- Plastic cup and bottle recycling
- IT equipment recycling
- Energy saving scheme (e.g. computer monitors must be switched off overnight and when not in use for more than one hour; lights must be switched off overnight)
- Milk carton recycling scheme
Having achieved our aim of raising awareness within the firm, and addressing some of the environmental issues, we decided to go one step further and apply for accreditation, the International Environmental Standard ISO14001. We contracted SGS as our Auditors for this project and on 15th November 2005, Lyons Davidson's Bristol Offices were awarded the ISO14001 Accreditation. We are the first firm of Solicitors in the United Kingdom to have achieved this.
Our current Environmental Objectives for the year are:
- To reduce consumption of paper per head of staff
- To increase awareness of active commuting and the environmental impacts of work related transport
- To reduce the amount of waste LD sends to landfill, and to increase the reuse and recycling of resources
- To reduce electricity consumption per head of staff
- To increase the expertise of the Environmental Health and Safety department, and use that expertise to educate and raise awareness both internally and externally
- To reduce the amount of water consumption throughout the firm
- To begin calculating our carbon footprint, implement a carbon reduction programme, with the overall objective to become carbon neutral in the future
