Environment

At PwC, we are committed to environmental stewardship because we see it as critical to the long-term success and sustainability of our business and our clients’ businesses. We also view environmental stewardship as critical to our communities and to those who work within them, including our partners and staff.

Energy

Energy use within our workspaces and data centers is one of our most significant environmental impacts, accounting for 24% of our carbon footprint in FY11.

• Telecommuting

  Many of our people do not require office space every day to carry out their day to day responsibilities and since 1999, we have supported telecommuting through a mix of flexible human resources policies and technology means.

• Hoteling

  Hoteling lowers real estate costs and environmental impacts and improves productivity. Our system allows users to choose desks based on where they are and what they need.

• Virtualized servers

  By virtualizing over 2,800 servers in our Data Center, we can run more programs on fewer servers. This has reduced our energy use by over 14.7 million kWh, the equivalent of the energy consumption of 1,278 average US homes.

Transportation

We have two separate and distinct sets of impacts when it comes to carbon emissions from transportation: business travel, and employee commuting.

• Business travel

  As a services firm, business travel is the largest contributor to our carbon footprint. To encourage more people to try alternatives, we pledged to plant five trees for every videoconference.

• Employee commuting

  Using mass transit subsidies, carpool matchmaking, and employee and community engagement, we work to encourage our people to take the most efficient commute.

Green teams

To succeed in our environmental efforts we need to engage with our people at the office level. Our local “Green Teams” support our broad environmental stewardship strategy and make it relevant to individual offices and markets.

Other ways we engage our people include:

• Dashboards

  We are designing “dashboards” to provide customized data across our entire range of Corporate Responsibility focus areas.

• Carbon calculator tool

  We offer a tool that enables employees to calculate their individual carbon footprint.

• PwC My Ride

  Our carpooling site matches staff and partners to others that have a similar commute.

• Rewards program

  PwC’s Well-Being Rewards Program rewards green activities.

Materials and waste

Even though waste is a relatively small part of our overall environmental footprint, we recognize the importance of reducing waste as a way to engage our people in tangible and visible environmental improvements.

• Printing

  We set our printers to duplex (double-sided) printing as the default to reduce paper usage.

• Reusable cups

  Many offices offer reusable cups to those staff who pledge to use them.

• Electronics recycling

  We offer staff an opportunity to recycle their old electronics in our offices.

• Computer reuse and recycling

  When equipment becomes obsolete, we ensure our hard drives are scrubbed or destroyed and materials are remanufactured as appropriate.

Managing our carbon footprint

Our priority is to reduce our greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and our contribution toward climate change. In FY11 we reached our reduction goal ahead of schedule, and we are developing a new set of goals.

• Air travel 32%

  While air travel is a crucial part of how we do business, we ask our people to consider whether they could combine or even eliminate trips and substitute meetings by videoconference.

• Commute 30%

  To cut commuting emissions, many of our offices offer a mass transit subsidy for their staff and we’ve launched a new program, PwC My Ride, which serves as a “carpooling matchmaker.”

• Workspace 22%

  We are conducting energy, waste, and water audits in PwC’s largest offices, representing over 80% of our square footage, to identify and implement projects that will shrink our office footprint.

• Other 16%

  The “other” category largely comprises the greenhouse gas emissions associated with our purchase of other business travel services (hotels rooms, taxis...) and office supplies, which we also continue to reduce.