Sustainability report 2008-2009

Brook Lyndhurst is committed to working towards a more sustainable society and economy. Our sustainability report describes how we performed in the last financial year and sets out our improvement objectives for next year.

Since coming into being in 1999 we have prided ourselves on ‘walking the talk’ in the conduct of our business. We contribute to sustainability directly through our consultancy work. In this process we consume resources, create waste, have a social responsibility and produce an economic impact.

This achievement report (full report downloadable from the link to right) sets out our performance against indicators from the three pillars of sustainability (environmental, economic and social) in the last financial year as well as our improvement objectives for the coming year. It measures our accomplishments and impacts on sustainability issues for the financial reporting period to December 2009.

Our key achievements this year were reducing our CO2 emissions per capita as well as our CO2 emissions per pound of turnover; purchasing 62% of our stationery with recycled content; and improving our internal knowledge transfer by setting up formal seminar sessions for staff.

Looking to next year, our improvement objectives for 2010 are:

  • To ensure we maintain a high percentage of recycled content in our stationery purchases by monitoring this on a quarterly basis.
  • To continue working to reduce CO2 per £ of turnover.
  • To improve our food waste monitoring and encourage less wasteful behaviour.
  • Where possible to calculate emissions based on GHG equivalent rather than CO2 only, acknowledging that this would increase overall emissions.
  • To include taxi travel in our calculations, again acknowledging that this would increase our GHG emissions.
  • To encourage employees to continue cycling into work by providing better facilities.
  • To improve our monitoring of recycled waste by relying on actual measures rather than standardised estimates.
  • To maintain and improve our internal knowledge transfer and training.
  • To conduct and analyse the results of a client survey.
  • To continue supporting staff welfare and professional development.

Brook Lyndhurst Blog

  • Waste and the built environment

    Our economy is built on the transformation of raw materials into products and services. Until recently the waste produced as part of this process or at the end of this product’s life was seen as an unavoidable part of this process. However, global economic growth is putting rising pressure on depleting resources, leading to a [...] 

  • Lies, damned lies and food behaviours

    Ruth and David spoke last week at the SRA seminar “Lies, damned lies and food behaviours”. Chaired by Oxford academic Ceridwen Roberts, the event involved a presentation from Ruth and David (you can see the slides here) and a Q&A session with a small but perfectly formed audience. As frequently happens when presenting or discussing food [...] 

  • Open data open season

    As the Royal Statistical Society (RSS) reports on the latest pressure brought to bear on the Government’s Open Data initiative, signs of a thriving and well-resourced statistics and data-based movement abound. The UK Statistics Authority, with Andrew Dilmot now in the chair, have instructed the Office of National Statistics to ensure that all responses to [...]