Our waste policy is simple: no waste should make it to landfill. Following the Waste Hierarchy, we reduce, re-use, and repair whenever possible and only recycle as a last resort. To do that, we first look at our consuming habits and then do everything we can to source and promote reusable alternatives to disposable products.

As an organisation, we’ve made significant progress since 2006 in reducing our waste, including single-use plastics in our UK head office in London, where we operate a zero-to-landfill waste policy. This is achieved through both; running sustainable behaviour change initiatives with the aid of Investec’s Team Green to encourage and influence our people, as well as working collaboratively with our third parties.

We’re always looking at ways to reduce our use of energy. We first achieved our integrated Energy Management System certification to the internationally recognised energy standard ISO50001 for our UK, Channel Island, and Ireland offices in March 2018, and retain certification today. Furthermore, we have installed submeters in our offices, introduced new energy monitoring software, and replaced our desktop computers with energy-efficient laptops.

Water is a precious resource, and we strive to use it consciously across our offices. We installed the state-of-the-art toilet system Propelair, exclusively in our new London offices in 2018. Propelair uses 1.5 litres of water per flush compared to a standard toilet system that uses approximately seven litres. We also run education campaigns in our offices, for example in support of World Water Day, to help our people save water at home too.

We invest in green and effective alternatives to business travel. As a global organisation, our people need to travel regularly to meet client requirements. We invest, however, in effective alternatives to business travel, such as telepresence alternatives across our buildings.

We will continue to encourage and incentivise active travel among our colleagues through our cycle-to-work scheme and facilities, as well as promoting greener commutes to work through cleaner air walking routes and the use of public transport. We include our travel footprint under scope 3 of our annual carbon footprint.

We are committed to encouraging and embedding sustainable procurement practices and considering products and services to reduce our carbon impact and technologies to improve our carbon footprint. Investec Group remains committed to the 10 principles of the United Nations (UN) Global Compact with respect to human rights, labour, environment, and anti-corruption. Our culture and values demonstrate our belief that as an organisation we can have a positive impact on the success and well-being of local communities, the environment and on overall macroeconomic stability.

We support the international agenda to abolish human trafficking, slavery, forced and child labour and support the UK Modern Slavery Act 2015. Our philosophy as an organisation is to respect the dignity and worth of the individual. We recognise the potential for our procurement and supply chain practices to be agents for change in respect of the different aspects of sustainability. We continue to engineer, within select industries, changed outcomes across economic, social, and environmental fronts.