Carbon Capital Markets conducts its business in a responsible manner to minimise the environmental impact of our operations, contribute to a sustainable future for our planet and improve the lives of communities where we have a presence. Key highlights include:
Social responsibility
We are gradually embarking on a range of initiatives to give back to the communities in which we operate and invest. A portion of our revenues will be allocated to charitable and non-government entities. We have teamed up with UNICEF Brazil to dedicate a portion of revenues to a local social programme, which positively impacts the children, women and men who live and work in the immediate vicinity of a landfill site. We have also made a donation to a school in Olinda, Brazil. Some of the parents of the children in the school were or are wastepickers. At Christmas we make a donation to the Rainforest Foundation instead of distributing Christmas cards.
Transportation
Green electricity
We purchase green power for our London office, which is provided from 100% renewable energy sources.
Energy & resource efficient offices
We have introduced a number of initiatives to help improve our resource use, measure and increase our energy efficiency and reduce our carbon emissions wherever possible. It is a company procedure that we conduct regular energy audits of all premises. We follow Carbon Trust and Energy Savings Trust guidelines on self-inspections. In Q4 2008 a third party audit will take place to assess our office space and procedures for further improvements.
Lighting
In our London head office we have begun to replace conventional strip lights bulbs with more efficient lights.
Air conditioning
We aim to provide a comfortable temperature with minimum use of air conditioning.
Our office procedure is that all lights and air conditioning are switched off overnight.
Computers and printers
All of our staff are required to follow company policies designed to minimise unnecessary power use. These include:
Social responsibility
We are gradually embarking on a range of initiatives to give back to the communities in which we operate and invest. A portion of our revenues will be allocated to charitable and non-government entities. We have teamed up with UNICEF Brazil to dedicate a portion of revenues to a local social programme, which positively impacts the children, women and men who live and work in the immediate vicinity of a landfill site. We have also made a donation to a school in Olinda, Brazil. Some of the parents of the children in the school were or are wastepickers. At Christmas we make a donation to the Rainforest Foundation instead of distributing Christmas cards.
Transportation
- Business flights - to help reduce the impact of our carbon emissions we offset all business flights, applying the accounting and reporting principles of the WRI/WBSCD Greenhouse Gas Protocol. This includes taking account of the distance of the flight (differentiating between short, medium and long haul) and whether or not the individual is travelling business class.
- Taxi services and car hire - Employees are encouraged to seek the best available public transport options whenever possible and efficient, not entailing excessive cost in their approach to incurring expenses. The use of taxis is permitted where the public transport option is either not available or considerably slower. In London where possible and practical we use taxi services of companies whose fleet consists of hybrid and other low emission vehicles, including Green Tomato Cars, Ecoigo and Climate Cars.
- Avoided travel - In the coming months we are installing videoconferencing facilities in all of our offices
Green electricity
We purchase green power for our London office, which is provided from 100% renewable energy sources.
Energy & resource efficient offices
We have introduced a number of initiatives to help improve our resource use, measure and increase our energy efficiency and reduce our carbon emissions wherever possible. It is a company procedure that we conduct regular energy audits of all premises. We follow Carbon Trust and Energy Savings Trust guidelines on self-inspections. In Q4 2008 a third party audit will take place to assess our office space and procedures for further improvements.
Lighting
In our London head office we have begun to replace conventional strip lights bulbs with more efficient lights.
Air conditioning
We aim to provide a comfortable temperature with minimum use of air conditioning.
Our office procedure is that all lights and air conditioning are switched off overnight.
Computers and printers
All of our staff are required to follow company policies designed to minimise unnecessary power use. These include:
- switching off computers and printers overnight, rather than leaving them on standby. This includes monitors and TVs as well as base units
- enabling computers to ‘laptop based power save’ option when not in use
- removing laptops from the mains power either directly or via a docking station, and ensuring docking stations are switched off when not in use
- enabling printers and fax machines to power save modes for sustained periods of inactivity. They are also set to duplex to save paper and print to a reduced quality to reduce the amount of toner required
Recycling
We apply the principles of reduce, reuse and recycle whenever possible and ask our staff to:
- place all plastic, cardboard, paper and cans in recycling bins for collection and recycling by a third party
- re-use paper which is not confidential
- return all printer cartridges to the manufacturers or other third parties for recycling
Paper
In our London office we use 100% recycled paper for printing and brochures.
Employee awareness
We promote and encourage environmental responsibility among our staff, and many people in our team have dedicated their free time to environmental stewardship.
Supplier relations
We prefer to work with companies whose values reflect our own. In 2008 we will be introducing a stakeholder questionnaire to ensure we are more aware of the environmental policies of our shareholders, partners, clients and suppliers.
As part of our ongoing commitment to reduce our overall footprint we are continually looking at ways to improve our policies and procedures to improve our resource efficiency.If you have any suggestions or would like further information please contact us at info@carboncapitalmarkets.com.