Stickers encouraging people 'to turn it off' are placed on equipment such as computer monitors and printers

For Mott MacDonald, reducing our carbon dioxide emissions is part of the bigger picture of who we are and what we stand for. The very nature of our work means that reducing impacts on the environment are high on the agenda across the whole business spectrum for our customers and our staff.

We’ve adopted a positive approach to reducing our carbon footprint and looking at our major impacts. With offices around the world, we have a responsibility to make sure they are efficient so we’re cutting our consumption of heat and energy by encouraging our employees to adopt best practice such as turning off equipment when not in use. This is having a positive impact in many of our offices – in Abu Dhabi, for example, we made total energy savings of 8.8% by adopting these measures.

Another major impact is business travel, which for us as a global business is to some extent unavoidable. However, we encourage the use of video and audio conferencing whenever possible, supported by use of shared whiteboard facilities through the internet. Other strategies include encouraging rail travel and disincentivising car travel.

Through internal discussion forums, we review and encourage ideas for further energy savings. It’s an employee-led approach; we’re an employee-owned company and our employees value sustainable practices and want to demonstrate their commitment to good corporate citizenship to the benefit of the local communities in which we operate. Some of the initiatives being adopted are car-pooling and cycle-to-work schemes.

Reducing CO₂ emissions helps us demonstrate our commitment to being a good corporate citizen, and based on data currently being collected we’ll be setting clear targets carbon reduction in 2008.