I have been working with Burges Salmon since 2018, supporting the environmental management system in various ways including refreshing and updating it, as well as providing ongoing internal audit and improvement activities. Burges Salmon have held certification to ISO 14001 since 2013 and are strongly committed to their Responsible Business model which encompasses market, workplace, community and environment. Burges Salmon wanted to carry out a strategic review of the latest in environmental thinking and see how the business could be developed to support the overall objective of ‘environmental sustainability and positive community impact’.

I worked with Eoin McQuone at Go Climate Positive to put together a programme for the session which included:

• What are we doing now?
• What are other businesses doing?
• What shall we consider doing next?

As part of the research report into the selected range of clients and competitors we had identified some initiatives to consider which included:

• Finding your Why
• Total Contribution Approach
• Chancery Lane Project
• Declare a Climate Emergency
• Science Based Targets
• Carbon Neutral vs Climate Positive
• Reporting methodologies – Global Reporting Initiative, UN Global Compact, UN SDGs

After a very thorough discussion, we decided to put these options to the vote, the winning ideas were getting involved with the Chancery Lane Project, setting Science Based Targets and going Carbon Neutral (which has since developed into Net Zero).