Environmental Impacts
Legal & General’s direct environmental impacts
arise from the use of our buildings and directly managed
properties, and from employee business travel. Indirect
impacts are associated with the goods we purchase (see
‘Our Suppliers’)
and through our investment decisions (see
‘Socially Responsible Investment’).
Our direct impacts can be broadly divided into:
- Emissions to air (greenhouse gases and ozone depleting substances)
- Emissions to land (waste)
- Resource use (water, gas, electricity and material consumption)
Our performance in each of these areas during 2006 is
outlined below (please also refer to the environmental
data sheet and
‘2006 Targets’).
Progress in 2006 (occupied properties)
Legal & General has collected data against a range
of indicators for over six years, and in 2006 we made
substantial progress in improving its accuracy. The data
is collected throughout the year and brought together
into an annual data sheet
(see data sheet).
The 2006 data shows the following trends:
Greenhouse Gases and Ozone Depleting Substances
-
Our medium term objective
is to reduce carbon dioxide
(CO2)
emissions per employee, and we’ve set two
targets aimed at meeting this objective
(see ‘2007 Targets’)
-
Overall carbon emissions
increased slightly in 2006 to 10,359 tonnes,
equating to 1.65 tonnes per person
-
The average CO2
rating of the Company car fleet has been reduced
from 172 to 167 grams/km in 2006
-
CO2 from
business travel was up 12% in 2006. This is directly
attributable to growth in business in 2006 as
reflected in car based business mileage and growth
in overseas business, leading to a 16% increase in
long haul flights
-
Positive trends in 2006
include a 48% increase in railway travel and 5%
reduction in short haul flights, indicating that
environmental awareness within the Company is
growing.
Waste
-
We aim to use resources
efficiently and minimise waste. We’ve also set
two targets to help us meet this objective (see
‘2007 Targets’)
-
In 2006 steps were taken to
improve an already strong recycling position. We now
report recycling rate from all our main UK
offices
-
Landfill waste increased
slightly in 2006 to 30% due to the partial closure
of our offices in Hove whilst employees were moved
to new premises. Total waste generation decreased,
however, and normalised figures are strong with only
79 kgs of waste sent to landfill per employee, based
on building occupation figures (see
data sheet).
Resource Use
-
Major improvements have
taken place in the reporting and analysis of Key
Performance Indicators
(KPIs)
in 2006. This is most evident in the reporting of
energy statistics at Legal & General occupied
properties. We’ve expanded our UK Facilities
Environmental Management certification
(ISO14001)
to cover all new office locations and monitoring of electricity
use has increased to over 99% and metered gas use over
78%.
-
Many sites reported
reductions in both energy and water use in 2006,
only to see these improvements offset by the opening
of the new offices and by high external temperatures
in the summer. In 2006 normalised figures (energy
per employee, etc) have been introduced to the data
sheet to facilitate understanding of such trends
-
Energy use increased across
the UK by nearly 7% in 2006 and we recognise that
this is a negative trend. This can be attributed to
an increase in building occupancy by approximately
2.5% over the year and the dual running of offices
in Hove whilst moving to new offices
-
Water use at UK occupied
properties increased in 2006 by nearly 6%. As with
energy this is unsurprising given increased
occupancy and higher external air temperatures.
Estimated overall water consumption was down by
nearly 3%, which we believe is due to the closure of
two smaller offices in 2006
-
Copier paper increased in
2006 by nearly 8%, with a slight increase in sheets
used per customer. Although this paper is now 100%
recycled, it is a trend which will need to be
addressed in 2007 (see
‘Looking Forward to 2007’).
