Together we are a Collective Force for Good – reducing our carbon footprint
At Stephen George + Partners, we not only design and deliver exemplary buildings, we care passionately about the places where we build and the broader impacts of our actions on the planet. Architecture is a powerful, thought provoking and wide-reaching medium and as one of the UK’s top 100 architectural practices we are in a unique position to show leadership on sustainability and social value.
As part of this process we have committed to reducing our carbon footprint with the Planet Mark, a certification which recognises outstanding achievements, encourages action, and builds an empowered community of like-minded individuals within the realm of sustainability.
On the back of our first-year Planet Mark report, we set ourselves a target of further reducing our overall carbon footprint by 5%. A rigorous review of our operations and engagement with staff and wider stakeholders on minimising the environmental impact of their actions and making progress on sustainability has yielded remarkable results. We are delighted to reveal that, in our second year of reporting (1 June 2019 -31 May 2020), we reduced our total carbon footprint by 39.4% from the previous year. Further, relative carbon per employee has been reduced by 31.8% from the previous year.
Steve Malkin, CEO & Founder at The Planet Mark, says: The climate emergency demands that the way buildings are constructed, and interact with the natural environment changes radically. Architects are in a unique position, in that as they embed a culture of sustainable consciousness, they add meaning to owners, end users of a building and the built environment in general. The team at Stephen George + Partners are truly committed to designing and delivering buildings that have a positive impact on the communities, and the people that they serve. We are delighted to have awarded them The Planet Mark for the second year.
We are also thrilled to announce that SGP has been shortlisted for the 2020 Planet Mark Awards in the Best Sustainability Campaign and Best Newcomer categories.
Nick Austin, Practice Director at SGP, comments: “We are incredibly proud of the carbon reductions that we have achieved in the last year and how those reductions have far surpassed our original targets. It is an indicator of the importance SGP places on sustainability and social value and builds further on our ambitions to improve our carbon reduction infrastructure and reporting.
When we found out about the reduction we had achieved, we enquired whether this was simply due to the restrictions that the pandemic, however we were informed that the results had been normalised to take account of this already.
To then find out that we have been shortlisted for the awards, has put huge smiles on our faces and we await the results with our fingers crossed.
Going forward we will continue to look closely at our travel impacts and our energy use. On the latter, we have now switched our electricity to a totally sustainable supply and would expect to see the benefits of this approach revealed in our next reporting year.”
The Planet Mark Awards will this year take place virtually on 15 October. Further information can be found here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-planet-mark-awards-2020-sponsored-by-prologis-uk-tickets-110953310338