LSA 2012 Annual Report - members achieve significant carbon reductions

The third Legal Sector Alliance Annual Report (PDF 6.8mb) is a highly valuable tool that not only gives us an opportunity to determine members’ collective progress, but also acts as an essential knowledge-sharing resource for driving change in the profession.

For the first time, we present the results of our annual Principles and Practices Survey alongside the results of our annual Carbon Footprint Protocol Report. The latter compiles the results for those members that use the Legal Sector Alliance’s own Carbon Footprint Protocol tool, and many more members chose to adopt this for the 2012 report. Doing so offers significant accuracy benefits when calculating the impact of our collective effort.

We are delighted to report a total reduction of almost 35,000 tonnes CO2e, amongst members that publicly disclosed their carbon emissions which is double the reduction figure achieved last year and equivalent to the annual emissions of two large UK law firms.

Over 80 per cent of firms achieved an absolute reduction in carbon emissions and the average carbon emitted per employee also decreased significantly, despite headcount reductions during 2011.

The carbon performance of the LSA Executive members is particularly strong, with an average reduction in total carbon emissions of 18 per cent over three years. This is a significant increase from an average of 12% over the previous three year reporting period.

In joining the Legal Sector Alliance, our members have made a commitment to take action on climate change. Understanding the impact we are having isn’t just important, it is our purpose.