Our Planet

Protecting the planet is the responsibility of everyone and it is only by working together that we can make the changes that are needed.

As a founding member of the Legal Sustainability Alliance and accredited to ISO14001, we are keen to play our part.

So how does this happen?

Our Environment Committee scrutinises all aspects of our operations to minimise the impact that our activities have on the environment.

Allied to this, we are working hard to calculate our yearly emissions to monitor progress so that we can continually chart our progress and make changes to our Carbon Reduction Plan to achieve our objectives.

This is not something which will be accomplished overnight. It will take a concerted effort right across the firm with all of us playing our part, but it is something which we are determined to do – not just because it’s the right thing to do but because it is the only thing to do for any responsible business.

Carbon reduction plan

Our commitment to the environment forms one of the core pillars in our Responsible Business Strategy. Ward Hadaway is committed to achieving Net Zero emissions by 2050 at the latest. This Carbon Reduction Plan has been completed following guidance outlined in the Technical standard for Completion of Carbon Reduction Plan and will be reviewed and updated annually.

Find out more

Our actions

Our journey towards achieving Net Zero consists of myriad different actions large and small in all areas of the business.

These include:

Cutting down on paper usage. Our war on waste means that we already have paper-lite and
paperless operations in a number of departments with more to come
Recycling all possible materials. We know there is no such place as ‘away’ so we set great store on ensuring that anything we use can be used again where possible, from drink bottles and cans to cardboard and food.
Minimising travel. As a firm with offices across the North and now Midlands, our footprint covers substantial distances but we encourage our people to minimise travel where practical, and have put in place the technology to make this possible. We are monitoring our travel to be able to better guide usage and alternatives going forwards.
Creating flexible working patterns. Using modern technology and communications helps us to cut down on unnecessary emissions from activities such as printing, electricity use, commuting and travel. It also makes client service delivery better and colleague working easier.
Encouraging sustainable transport. We have updated and upgraded our Cycle to Work scheme to allow colleagues to purchase electric bikes as well as conventional cycles via the programme.
Expanding environmentally-friendly facilities. We are working with our landlords to promote
electric charging points in our car parks so colleagues and clients with EVs can travel with confidence.
Reviewing the merchandise we offer a firm. We have ensured we look at this across each
piece’s entire lifecycle, finding ways to responsibly source, responsibly share, and responsibly recycle (where that is in our control).
Being founder members of the Legal Sustainability Alliance. This is the only not-for-profit sustainability network run by law firms for law firms and it informs, equips and empowers law firms to take effective action on the climate and nature crises at home, at work and through their practice.
Scrapping single use business cards. These have been replaced with cards which digitally transfer contact details to a recipient’s phone, where possible reducing waste.
Digitising client update communications. Wherever possible, our client updates are sent
Although minimal, we also use QR codes across any printed literature to reduce
paper usage, and enable updates to be made to information without reprinting.
Being active members of the Sustainable Recruitment Alliance. Amongst other things, this means that we won’t clutter the world with unnecessary pens, post-it notes and other paraphernalia when we’re recruiting for emerging talent for the firm.

A case study: Sourcing our pens

Consider the lifecycle of a pen...

As a firm who run seminars, host clients, attend exhibitions and much more, we have historically got through a lot of branded pens!

We have therefore taken action to reduce the numbers – by joining the Sustainable Recruitment Alliance, therefore no longer taking any to student milk rounds, by managing the distribution across our offices, and taking a more measured approach to merchandise at our key exhibitions for instance.

However we have decided there is still a need for some branded pens, so we wanted to minimise the impact of this procurement. We therefore looked at the life cycle of those pens to better understand the core factors in our decision. And that looks like this:

Therefore, these are some of the considerations we wanted to take into account:

Resources

Relies on non-renewable resources like oil and metals, high water and energy use during raw material processing.

Carbon footprint

Fossil fuel extraction, plastic production and transport = high emissions.

Pollution

Ink and plastics can leach chemicals into soil and water, small parts can be ingested by wildlife. Microplastics from degraded pens may enter ecosystem.

Recyclability

Limited due to mixed materials and ink contamination.

Waste generation

Billions of pens are discarded yearly and non-biodegradable pens can take hundreds of years to break down.

Taking all this into account, we spoke to our suppliers to end up with the following: a pen made from 100% recycled plastic, produced in a climate-neutral production facility run on 100% green electricity, supplied in Bio foil bags made up of 80% renewable raw material, and 100% recyclable.

We put a lot of effort into finding ways to achieve our commercial goals whilst minimising our carbon footprint. This is just one example of how we have tried to do that.