Addressing climate change

Two recent initiatives confirm the importance we are attaching to mitigating the impact of climate change - and ensuring that we are geared up to deal with its consequences.

First, we were one of just three suppliers invited to speak at an important climate change summit organised by our customer Anglian Water (AW).

Anglian Water Group Chief Executive, Jonson Cox, in his keynote address said: "We must find clever ways of reversing the trend. We will help our suppliers understand their carbon footprint and in doing so we will ask them to help us reduce our levels."

Ian Findlater, Group Business Development Director, outlined the programme of change underway at May Gurney, and the success of the Environment Champions project. A 28% reduction in waste sent to landfill was one of the headline achievements of Environment Champions, together with sizeable reductions in resource and energy use.

Ian Findlater said: "On the day we were asked to sign up to a 'Commitment to Action' - a pledge to mobilise our company, employees, suppliers and customers by encouraging them to assess and then reduce their carbon footprints.

"It is encouraging to see such demonstrable leadership from a key customer. We welcome this - sustainability is about future-proofing the business, and is already very high on our agenda. Recently we established our pilot carbon footprint for 2006/7 and are now measuring and managing it on a monthly basis."

We've also recently held the first in a series of internal workshops focussing on 'climate change adaptation'. The workshop was facilitated by Tom Macagno, Sustainability Manager, in partnership with the engineering consultancy, Gifford.

While we've introduced a range of measures and initiatives to lessen the impact of our activities on the environment, there's no doubt that climate change needs to be taken into consideration when planning how best to meet the needs of our customers and the public going forward.

Tom Macagno said: "The workshop set out to raise managers' awareness of climate change and its implications for all of us in our private and business lives."

The workshop also looked at climate change from a risk management perspective, and how we might manage the risk by keeping options open to deliver benefits whatever the extent of climate change. Delegates were also invited to consider a series of 'adaptation strategies' to help alleviate or lessen the impact of climate change.