The Group Environmental Policy Statement, which is set out in the Group Policy Manual, commits us to identifying and managing the environmental impacts associated with our activities. The policy and our implementation programmes support the Group’s strategy. Our objective is to promote greater efficiency and progressively reduce our environmental impacts per unit of turnover.

Our most significant environmental impacts are carbon emissions due to the consumption of energy at our facilities, the use of paper in our printed catalogues, the generation of waste, packaging consumption and water use.

We use a set of key performance indicators (KPIs) to assess and monitor the environmental performance of our sites and businesses. The KPIs index relevant environmental impacts to sales to reflect performance allowing for business growth. This enables us to benchmark individual Group businesses and helps identify performance improvement opportunities.

We encourage our businesses to gain certification to ISO14001:2004 Environmental Management Standard where this supports our Group business and environmental objectives. Our French business gained the ISO14001 standard during 2009, which means that some 60% of turnover by sales are employed in ISO14001 certificated businesses. Further sites around the world are working towards certification in 2010.

We report below on our environmental impacts for the calendar years 2008 and 2009. We aim to continually improve the quality and coverage of our environmental reporting and have restated 2008 performance where appropriate with all KPIs on a constant currency basis. All of our facilities across the Group report their environmental performance.

The global economic slowdown during 2009 had a significant effect on our environmental KPIs as the reduced level of sales resulted in lower utilisation in a number of areas.

Emissions

Our premises and infrastructure are the primary source of our carbon emissions, and present a relatively fixed element of our emissions “footprint”.

In absolute terms CO2 emissions for the calendar year 2009 were down 4% compared with 2008. However, with the reduced level of sales, CO2 emissions per £m turnover deteriorated by 10%. CO2 emissions intensity per unit of floor area was reduced by 4%, due to continuing energy efficiency initiatives in the larger businesses, including the UK, North America and France, and reduced working hours in some smaller facilities, for example, the UK trade counters.

In future, our UK business will be covered by the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) Energy Efficiency scheme. This scheme will require us to monitor and report energy usage and the related emissions on an annual basis. We will be required to purchase a number of carbon allowances to account for the emissions for which we are responsible.

Preparations for the implementation of the CRC scheme are well advanced, with the UK business achieving the Carbon Trust Standard following an independent audit confirming the year on year reduction of carbon emissions.

Emissions KPIs Total Emissions
(Tonnes CO2)

Tonnes CO2
per £m Turnover
2009 2008 2009 2008
CO2 due to premises energy use *# 20,181 21,094 21.6 19.7

* CO2 equivalent from all energy sources, including country specific CO2 factors for electricity
# - Excludes a number of smaller facilities where utilities are included in lease costs


Paper

We continue to work closely with our pulp and paper suppliers and printers to reduce the carbon footprint of the paper catalogue. This applies both in production and distribution and we work to minimise weight and to maximise efficiency. As a result we have improved distribution efficiencies, reduced costs and cut our carbon footprint.

All the pulp for our paper catalogues are sourced from either the Sustainable Forestry Initiative or PEFC accredited forests, with all the printing carried out in ISO14001 certificated facilities. Our catalogues in the European and Asian markets all carry the PEFC “chain of custody” accreditation marks.

Our customer packaging is the subject of on-going review which aims to identify opportunities to reduce the quantity of packaging whilst ensuring customer orders are protected against damage whilst in transit. As a result of this, the weight of packaging per unit of sales reduced by around 3% in the year.

Waste

We made progress reducing our waste in absolute terms during the year. Total waste reduced by 13% and tonnes waste per £m Turnover was unchanged year on year. At 68%, the proportion of total waste which was recycled remained high, although as a result of the lowered demand in some markets for recycled materials, this was lower than the 69% achieved in 2008.

We emphasise the importance of waste reduction and recycling initiatives across the Group by spreading best practice, including for example moving to electronic invoicing, inclusion of buyback clauses in supplier contracts and reuse of transit packaging.

Total Waster
(Tonnes)		 Tonnes Waster per
£m Turnover
Waste KPIs 2009 2008 2009 2008
Total Waste 2,401 2,766 2.6 2.6
Waste reused / recycled 1,624 1,915 1.7 1.8

Water

The Group’s use of water is primarily for domestic and fire safety purposes, such as catering, washroom purposes, and water sprinkler systems.

Across the Group we continue to work to reduce water consumption and during 2009 total water use reduced by 17%. Water use per employee increased by 4% impacted by the fixed nature of some water consumption, such as the periodic testing of sprinklers.

Water usage reduction initiatives included tighter control of irrigation, reductions in domestic water use and other initiatives at many sites around the Group.


Water KPI's Total Water
Consumption (m3)		 m3 Water Consumption
per employee
2009 2008 2009 2008
Total Water Use 45,200 54,145 8.5 8.2