The majority of our operations, about 85%, are carried out on customers’ own premises.  Their environmental impacts form part of the customer’s wider impact, rather than ours.

Where we are in control of the environment within which we are working we apply our own environmental management systems and measure our impacts accordingly.  This is managed and reported locally.

The diversity of our business does not easily enable us to consolidate this information across the Group.  Separating out the impacts that are under our control is a big task, across some 600 different contracts. To enable this we have developed Assure™ to enable us to achieve this where we are in control of environmental impacts.  Details on our performance are provided in our corporate responsibility reports.

We have also established an environmental network group to provide vital leadership in this area.  Comprising representatives from all our divisions, its members meet monthly to refine strategies, align processes and develop initiatives.  The group has recently published identification, measurement and reporting guidelines covering three critical areas: greenhouse gas emissions, waste management and water use.