Nabarro awarded Gold Award for environmental initiatives by Mayor of London
In 2008, Nabarro joined the Green 500, one of the Mayor's initiatives to reduce carbon emissions, targeting initially 500 of the biggest organisations in London.
It became clear very quickly that Nabarro's existing environmental and carbon reduction initiatives, in place since 2007, would stand the firm in good stead for an award in 2009. On 11 June 2009 at Chelsea Football Club, Stamford Bridge, the Mayor of London awarded the firm with a Gold Award.
In order to participate, we completed surveys and provided data and evidence in areas such as energy management (involving successful carbon reduction initiatives such as installing low power LED lighting, new hot beverage machines with motion detection for power saving, moving to blade server technology and virtualisation), waste management (involving a very successful recycling initiative and an in-house water bottling system for our meeting rooms) and an overall reduction in our carbon footprint.
As tenants in a leased building we rely heavily on the cooperation of our suppliers and all of our requests for cooperation and information have been met with enthusiasm enabling us to further improve our performance. Director's Table, our catering contractor, has introduced a large number of carbon saving initiatives with its own supplier rationalisation and minimising deliveries to the building. Our landlord's managing agent is also on board ensuring all our non-recyclable waste goes to a 'burn for energy' scheme, with many more initiatives in the pipeline.
The efforts of our own staff such as Sarah Long in Facilities in establishing our recycling scheme and of course all staff in taking it on board and ensuring they play their part in recycling their rubbish should not go unmentioned. Our calculations, ratified by Green 500 and NEF, show our new recycling scheme and waste management programme has enabled us to ensure that 75 tonnes of carbon emissions were prevented this year, a 95% reduction, leaving only 3.5 tonnes of carbon emissions per year to try and prevent in order to have a carbon neutral waste stream.
Russell Stevens, Head of Facilities said, "When Graham Lust first mentioned membership of the Green 500 to me I wondered how our current environmental programme would fit with their requirements. It became clear very quickly that we were not only undertaking most of the initiatives the scheme would expect but surpassing them in certain areas. The success of any environmental programme is very much down to the participation of the people in the building, and in that, our staff and partners have been tremendous. I knew we would receive an award for our efforts this year but to achieve the Gold Award level in our first year of participation is really pleasing as there were not many firms or companies that placed higher. In fact we received the same award as the Mayor's own TFL! I am determined we will improve further this year, and the next, and we have set some demanding new targets for 2009. The professional emphasis on environmental performance is now clear as our clients demand to see our credentials as part of the tender process and as part of the Carbon Reduction Commitment programme. Through our efforts we are now well placed to confidently provide our information knowing we compare very favourably with our peers and our competition."
