Environment

Fostering environmentally sustainable growth for our company and our stakeholders is at the heart of our environmental strategy, which comprises four areas: running efficient operations, working sustainably, enabling client sustainability and providing insights to advance sustainability. For example, Accenture is committed to understanding and addressing environmental impacts—including carbon, waste and water—resulting from our operations. Environmental stewardship is ingrained in our Code of Business Ethics and our core values, specifically Stewardship. These inform our Environmental Responsibility Policy, which we established in 2007 and updated in 2009.

We have a clear governance structure to drive performance toward our goals and to articulate roles and responsibilities for our environmental efforts. For example, the Environmental Steering Group, which supports our Corporate Citizenship Council, determines our processes for providing guidance around carbon-emissions disclosure and recommended that Accenture pursue global ISO 14001 certification, as well as the employee Eco Challenge and the Team Eco Challenge.

We run and grow our business on an environmentally sustainable basis, cultivating eco-efficient practices that include energy management and resource conservation.

Our environmental footprint consists primarily of carbon emissions generated from business travel and office energy use, and we are committed to addressing both of these as we work to improve our environmental performance. We achieved our fiscal 2009 target of a 25 percent reduction of per employee emissions over fiscal 2007 baseline and continue to make significant strides.

In fiscal 2011, we reduced our per employee emissions approximately 30 percent from our fiscal 2007 baseline—but we recognize challenges to meet our robust environmental objectives. The strong increase in demand for our services and our expansion into emerging growth markets over the past year resulted in an associated increase in air travel, which has slowed our progress toward our goal of reducing per employee carbon emissions 40 percent by 2012 from our fiscal 2007 baseline. As a result, we are updating our fiscal 2012 goal: we will continue to maintain a per employee carbon reduction of approximately 30 percent against our fiscal 2007 baseline.

Because more than 80 percent of our overall carbon emissions is derived from electricity for our office locations and air travel, in fiscal 2010 we focused on applying technologies and implementing actions to improve our performance in these areas.

For example, we have increased our use of Telepresence next-generation video conferencing technology. Now implemented in more than 85 Accenture locations worldwide, including at a number of client sites, the technology connects our people and our clients. Our adoption of collaboration technology also includes the installation of more than 50 personal Telepresence units, which expands our number of Telepresence facilities to more than 135.

Energy management

As part of our commitment to lower our carbon footprint, we adopt "green" building techniques and operations around the world. For example, we have installed smart building technology in our facilities in Paris, and, over a period of six months in 2011, we saved the equivalent of 620 trees by reducing our energy usage by 14 percent over 2010.

Initiatives like these have helped us achieve global ISO 14001 certification, and in fiscal 2010 and 2011 successful audits of our ISO 14001 locations resulted in renewal of our global certificate. Additionally, many Accenture offices around the world hold green building certifications, including Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM) and Green Star 6.

To reduce our use of office electricity, in fiscal 2010 we implemented new Remote Energy Monitoring (REM) technologies. We now have connected more than 150 smart meters in 20 locations in 10 countries, and, in our Johannesburg, South Africa, location, REM technologies yielded a 10 percent efficiency improvement in only four weeks.

We have also improved our energy efficiency over the last two years. In fiscal 2010, our collective efficiency activities helped us save approximately 36,400,000 kWh compared with our fiscal 2007 baseline. These activities allowed us to avoid 21,000 metric tons of CO₂ emissions and approximately US$4.1 million. In fiscal 2011, our collective efficiency activities helped us save approximately 63,400,000 kWh compared with our fiscal 2007 baseline, thereby avoiding 44,000 metric tons of CO₂ emissions and approximately US$7.8 million.

We also procure more than 10 percent of our office electricity from renewable sources. Based on our ability to replace nonrenewable with renewable energy in several of our locations, we have developed a global energy procurement strategy that we plan to execute in additional locations over the next two years.

Water and waste management

Although our operations are not water intensive, we recognize the increasing importance of water scarcity and availability. In fiscal 2011, using the Global Water Tool provided by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, we performed an analysis of water consumption in our offices located in areas of water scarcity. We estimate that our per-workstation consumption in these locations is less than 10 meters³ annually. We will continue to work with our building-management companies to promote the careful use of water, implementing improvements where practical.

We manage electronic waste (e-waste) across our company through a global tracking application and established relationships with disposal vendors. In fiscal 2011, we tracked the disposal of more than 38,000 laptops and desktop computers comprising more than 173 metric tons of equipment. Approximately 99 percent of these were disposed in a method avoiding a landfill, primarily through management by responsible disposal vendors.

Learn more about Accenture's environmental performance.

Engaging our employees

Our people enthusiastically create and adopt innovative approaches to eco-smart work practices, notably in our global Team Eco Challenge competitions, which encourage embedding eco-smart work practices into Accenture projects.

In 2010, more than 100 project teams submitted their environmental-impact-reduction case studies to the first Team Eco Challenge. The Bangalore-based winning team changed the pre-set temperature in Accenture in India’s data centers, reducing power consumption by 11 percent and carbon emissions by approximately 1,000 metric tons annually. We are now implementing the initiative in 45 data centers around the world.

In 2011, more than 160 teams representing more than 1,400 employees calculated their carbon reduction amounts against their starting carbon footprint, using an online tool. Together, they committed to reduce more than 3,300 metric tons of carbon—the same amount of carbon emitted by 1,780 round-trip commercial flights between London and Bangalore (based on emissions factors from the United Stated Environmental Protection Agency).

Because business travel continues to be at the heart of our delivery model, we are teaming with clients, when appropriate, to implement smart work and alternative travel arrangements so we can stay connected and deliver value with maximum efficiency, regardless of where our people are located.

Our Smart Work program promotes eco efficiency by having employees work one or more weeks per month from their local offices or home-office locations, as appropriate, and the remainder of the month at the client site. Additionally, it encourages our people to purchase airline tickets and reserve hotel rooms in advance and to use tools and technology, such as Telepresence, web-conferencing and other collaboration technologies, to help increase travel efficiency.

Nurturing supplier sustainability

As we strive to improve the sustainability of our own operations, Accenture also seeks to use our knowledge, experience and technologies to encourage our suppliers' sustainability efforts.

We ask all new suppliers in our Procurement process questions about their environmental performance. In fiscal 2010 and 2011, 99 percent and 98 percent, respectively, of the RFPs issued by Accenture Procurement included environmental questionnaires. As we expand our operations, we will continue to work toward our fiscal 2012 target of at least 95 percent.

We continue to work with our suppliers to improve environmental practices. For instance, in 2011, Dell, a key provider of our personal computers and laptops, began shipping our purchases via ocean freight rather than air whenever possible. This change reduced associated shipping-related emissions by 92 percent for Dell's shipments to Accenture in the United States and 93 percent for Dell's shipments to Accenture in Europe.

In 2010, we became a corporate member of Carbon Disclosure Project's Supply Chain program and asked our top global IT suppliers to respond to its questionnaire on our behalf. We received a 100 percent response rate that year—and again in 2011, even though we doubled the number of supplier invitees. With the information we gleaned from the responses, we can improve our strategic planning and supplier selection.

Accenture is committed to helping forward-thinking organizations position sustainability as a key lever to long-term success. We help them leverage their assets and capabilities to drive innovation and profitable growth, while striving for positive economic, environmental and social impacts.

Our projects range from helping Pão de Açúcar, Brazil's first green grocery store, become the industry's sustainability leader through operational efficiency and excellence to helping Baltimore Gas and Electric implement a smart meter network for its 1.2 million customers, aimed at reducing peak electricity demand, increasing customer service and enhancing operational performance.

For these and our other clients, we combine a comprehensive set of assets, offerings and tools with our insights and deep experience to help them achieve high performance.

We strive to contribute to the overall environmental agenda, helping to gain insight into issues and working with other businesses and organizations on solutions that will help make the world a better place. Examples of reports we have provided include:

• Energy-Smart Buildings: How IT Can Cut Energy Use and Costs, co-authored with Microsoft and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which found that innovative use of IT analytics can help companies save up to 25 percent of the US$100 billion that US companies alone spend on energy, without major disruption;
• A New Era of Sustainability: UN Global Compact – Accenture CEO Study 2010, which found that 93 percent of CEOs surveyed said sustainability issues will be critical to the future success of their businesses;
• Energy Efficiency Research Report, developed with the World Economic Forum, which focuses on energy efficiency as a widely recognized, scalable, low-cost route to reduce energy consumption.
  

  For these and our other clients, we combine a comprehensive set of assets, offerings and tools with our insights and deep experience to help them achieve high performance.