To help raise awareness of the environmental and sustainability issues effecting the planet, the professional service firm KPMG is set to host a series of events throughout its UK offices to reduce its plastic intake.
Hosted in conjunction with the producer of BBC’s Blue Planet II, Mark Brownlow, the events will allow colleagues to gain further insight into KPMG’s environmental programmes, the firm’s plastics commitment and the impact it is having on the business, individuals and the environment at large.
Following the launch of the firm’s Waste in our Time campaign, which was introduced last year, KPMG has provided all its staff with re-usable water bottles.
“At KPMG we know that to be a responsible business we need to take positive action towards the issues we are seeing in today’s environment, and not just pay lip service."
"We are working hard to reduce our environmental impact by operating in the most efficient way possible, and we are proud to have reduced our carbon emissions by 27%, exceeding our target of 20% reduction by 2020,” explained David Sayer, Vice Chair at KPMG.
“Through the firm’s Waste in our Time campaign we have seen a number of positive changes both on an individual and an organisational level. We have saved approximately 225 trees and 1,000 bags of general waste each month through replacing paper hand towels in the toilets of two of our largest offices with energy efficient hand driers.
"We have saved our staff in excess of £7,000 over the past year through offering 15p discount when utilising reusable coffee cups, and our plastics reduction throughout our UK offices has been phenomenal, this is all down to the commitment of our staff to provide a better place for everyone to work.”
Meanwhile, its pledge to remove plastic water cups, a switch to metal cutlery and the replacement of more than three million plastic vending cups with compostable and paper alternatives has seen the company so far successfully remove 7.4million items of single use plastics from all national offices.
Dan Thomas, Head of Corporates at KPMG, added: “World Environment Day is challenging us all on what we can do to help beat air pollution. The corporate world has a huge role to play and promisingly, five firms a week are now setting sustainability targets.”
As KPMG rolls out several new initiatives to tackle sustainability and plastic waste, a recent study previously revealed that working a nine-hour week would also help to save the planet.
HR Grapevine shared a study from think tank Autonomy, which revealed that switching to a nine-hour work schedule per week would help keep the country on track to stall more than 2C of global warming.
KPMG’s decision to reduce the business’ plastic intake and raise more awareness can only be a positive move, but, would a nine-hour week be a viable alternative to help save the world? Let us know in the comments below…
