FEATURED POST
Bishop Fleming is celebrating its centenary year and to help mark the significant milestone, the firm has launched an initiative to ‘give back’.
A team of 16 staff members drawn from each of the firm’s seven offices are taking part in Bishop Fleming’s Bright Futures initiative this year. The group recently launched a campaign called ‘BF Giving Back – A brighter future starts today’ with the aim of minimizing and eliminating the use of plastic across the business.
In six months, the business has removed the use of over six commonly used single-use plastic items, such as carrier bags, bubble wrap, single-use coffee cups, and plastic straws, plates and cutlery.
The environmental initiative incorporates several elements, and in July the firm was accredited by Surfers Against Sewage as a ‘Plastic Free Champion’. They are immensely proud of this achievement as sustainability is a critical part of the firm’s core values, which includes reducing its impact on the environment.
An Environmental Management System (EMS) is used across the firm to measure the consumption of environmental indicators. The latest statistics show that since 2012 electricity and gas usage are down by 2.6% per employee, the average business miles per £,000 income is down 11.9% and annual paper consumption is down just under 37%.
Bishop Fleming’s local Bright Futures representative in their Truro office is audit senior, Kristina Pogonowska.
She said: “Amongst other environmental initiatives, we decided that one way of actually “giving back” was to essentially “take away” – in this case, plastic. Raising further awareness of plastic pollution has led to many of my colleagues being shocked by just how many single-use plastic items surround us daily.
“Unfortunately, it is impractical to expect to cut out all plastics from your life, but we must remember that no one person can change the world, it’s only by coming together that our individual small changes can have a big impact.”
