Environment: Managing our impact

As a world leader in providing climate change advice to clients, we have to behave like one in our business operations. Why do we believe we should reduce our impact on the environment? Because our clients and members of the firm expect it and because we think it is the right thing to do.

Clifford Chance is the only law firm ranked top tier in the Chambers 2009 International and Europe-wide rankings for climate change practice groups. We recognise that we can only advise with conviction if we achieve high environmental standards ourselves.

On 1 May 2008 the firm published its Global Environmental Policy, available online at www.cliffordchance.com/cr. There is now an individual in every office responsible for collecting data and we report here on our progress towards the three-year targets that we set in 2008. Many small steps are being taken across the firm – and together they are adding up to significant inroads towards our goals. We also provide some highlights from our international Reduce, Reuse, Recycle campaign:

Target: Run environmental awareness campaigns.

Progress: A number of campaigns have been run both globally and locally.

World Environment Day:

Clifford Chance adopted an international approach to make the most of World Environment Day on 5 June 2008. Initiatives included the ‘Big White Bin’ in Hong Kong, collecting used books and other goods for donation and recycling. The donated books led to a charity book sale and further collections. In Singapore, the short film ‘The Story of Stuff’ was screened to highlight the impact of human consumption on our environment. Inspired by the 2008 occasion, on World Environment Day 2009, every office took action.

Earth Hour:

For 60 minutes from 8:30pm local time on 28 March 2009, hundreds of millions of people in more than 4,000 cities and towns in 88 countries switched off their lights to mark World Wildlife Fund Earth Hour (www.earthhour.org). Every Clifford Chance office took part in the hour-long lights-out.

Target: Introduce an environmental management system (EMS) to manage our environmental impact.

Progress: Clifford Chance London has an EMS independently certified to the ISO 14001 standard. All but two offices ran an internal EMS and tracked CO₂ emissions and all offices will have a system in place in 2009.

Target: Work with key suppliers to understand, manage and reduce the environmental impacts of our purchases.

Progress: Questionnaires are now sent to all key suppliers asking for environmental (as well as other CSR) information. Many purchases now incorporate ways of reducing the environmental impact, for instance we have Wake-on-LAN installed on our desktop PCs, and we are purchasing more energy from renewable sources and more paper with recycled content or from sustainable sources.

Target: Promote environmental initiatives by our employees and relevant external groups and organisations through our CR programme.

Progress: Articles are run on CC Today, our internal daily bulletin. Our environment intranet offers environment-friendly hints and tips for the workplace and the home, and details of the firm’s environmental targets and how we work with clients on environmentally-focused issues. We will be introducing the CR awards, including a category for environmental projects, in Autumn 2009.