Sustainability

Deacons is committed to reducing our impact on the environment.

Small actions can make a big difference. We can each make a contribution to protecting our environment – without even leaving the office.

Future First

To help realise Deacons’ green vision to be an environmentally sustainable business with minimal impact on our planet we have established Future First, a national team of volunteer staff and partners led by Elisa de Wit, a partner in Deacons’ Environment & Planning practice and an authority in her field, and the firm's director of environmental sustainability, Phil Scorgie.

The task of Future First is to monitor Deacons’ environmental profile on an ongoing basis and initiate fast and effective action to modify practices that stand in the way of making the way we do business more environmentally sustainable.

Already, Future First has highlighted a number of areas as priorities for action and launched a program of initiatives that will kick-start us towards our vision of a green office, including:

• Audits and reports on IT-related energy consumption, printing, paper, waste and carbon neutrality
• Requesting environmental or green policies from our suppliers
• Enabling double-sided printing by default
• Enabling power management on all personal computers
• Switching to 100% recycled paper for copying, printing and letter head, and
• Drafting environmental sustainability plans and policies.

Together, these green office initiatives are expected to reduce Deacons’ greenhouse gas emissions by up to 30% by mid 2008. This equates to 1500 tonnes of CO₂, which is equal to planting 5500 trees.

Future First complements Deacons’ leading Environment & Planning practice which offers a comprehensive range of services to clients, including advising and assisting them with environmentally sustainable initiatives and green policies.