Environmental stewardship

Collaborating for better solutions

We create value for our business and our communities by respecting the environment, and understanding and reducing our impact on the world around us. We also create value for clients through PwC’s sustainability and climate change practices.

Our overarching ambition is to minimise our environmental impact and demonstrate our commitment externally through appropriate reporting.

As a provider of professional services PwC has a relatively low environmental footprint but believes good environmental stewardship is part of an organisation’s licence to operate.

At PwC we are working to develop more environmentally-efficient business practices and are managing our environmental impact by understanding and then mitigating our greatest impacts through carbon measurement and reporting.

However, our greatest potential for influence is to impact the environment positively through our work with clients.

The PwC network consists of firms that are separate legal entities. That’s because in many parts of the world, laws and regulations require accounting firms to be locally owned and independent.

Although regulatory attitudes on this issue are changing, the PwC network is not a corporate multinational and member firms don’t and can’t operate as if it were.

The firms that make up the Network are committed to working together to provide quality services to clients throughout the world.

By working together, member firms comprise a vigorous global network with the flexibility to operate simultaneously as the most local and the most global of businesses.

Corporate Responsibility (CR) at PwC is similarly governed at global and local levels and it runs right to the top of local and global network leadership.

Responsibility for local CR ultimately rests with each Territory Senior Partner and, at a global level CR is governed by the Global Corporate Responsibility Board (GCRB) which is chaired by our Network Vice Chairman.

In line with the Global CR strategy, we have identified minimum suggested guidance for effective environmental management which member firms in the PwC network are encouraged to adopt to minimise the direct and indirect environmental impacts of their operations. Many member firms perform well beyond the suggested minimum requirements and demonstrate leading environmental stewardship in their local markets.

PwC member firms are expected to comply with all regulations and any other environmental requirements to which they are subject and are encouraged to make the following commitments:

• Continuously improve their performance and aspire to integrate environmental management good practice in business operations
• Use resources efficiently and minimise the generation of waste
• Consider environmental and social issues in the procurement of goods and services
• Consider environmental issues and energy performance in the acquisition, design, refurbishment, location, management and use of buildings
• Consider how to reduce the environmental impact of business travel

PwC member firms are encouraged to:

• Develop and implement a local environmental policy
• Provide Board level oversight and review of their environmental policies and performance.
• Measure and externally report environmental performance including their greenhouse gas emissions annually in accordance with PwC's global CR reporting manual2
• Engage their people on environmental issues to increase awareness and embed environmental responsibility
• Work together with their people, community partners, suppliers, landlords and other stakeholders to promote improved environmental performance
• Promote appropriate consideration of environmental risks and opportunities in the services they provide to clients
• Review their environmental policy regularly