As an environmental sustainability think tank, it is essential that we work to minimise our environmental impacts and foster a healthy work environment. We recognise our responsibility to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and strive to make sustainable practices and high environmental awareness a norm.
Our most significant environmental impacts are:
Emissions from the use of carbon-based energy in our offices and fuel in transport, with travel being our main environmental impact;
Resource consumption by our use of raw materials, office supplies and furniture;
Production of waste materials;
The environmental performance of our suppliers and partners.
Our overall aim is to continually improve our environmental performance through minimising resource consumption, reducing waste, reusing and recycling materials, and considering a commitment to sustainable practices when choosing suppliers and partners.
We are committed to reducing the total amount of travel through the use of new technologies and through developing virtual meeting facilities. These are being further upgraded at present.
We encourage the use of available low impact travel for daily home-work commuting. This is done through public transport loans, a ‘no company car’ policy, and bicycle schemes in both the Brussels and London offices;
We have flexible working practices to reduce the need to travel to work and during work, including significant recent investment in remote access to email and computer servers;
Train travel is strongly preferred over other modes of longer distance transport and is used exclusively on many of the key routes used by staff, e.g. between Brussels, London and Paris.
Keep energy use to a minimum by doing the following:
As a policy studies institute, much of our work involves the production of reports or other potentially paper-based outputs; we similarly receive many printed books and reports and maintain a small paper-based library. Recognising the material, energy and pollution impacts of paper creation and use our policy is:
As for the remaining office supplies, equipment and good practice we:
re-use office supplies (folders, envelopes, etc.) as long as they remain fit for their use;
recycle materials, including toner cartridges, glass, etc;
arrange regular servicing of machinery to ensure operation at maximum efficiency, and minimal adverse impact;
try to minimise the use of supplies;
favour purchasing environmentally friendly products;
provide vegetarian catering at our events in the Brussels and London offices;
maintain staff awareness and involvement with regular in-house debates on various environmental subjects (i.e. nuclear energy, meat industry).
To deliver the policy outlined above, we are committed to doing the following:
Brussels office
Rue Joseph II 36-38, 1000
brussels@ieep.eu
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IEEP’s work is produced with the financial support of the LIFE Programme of the European Union.
The work reflects only the views of its authors and not the donors.
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