PwC | China

Environmental stewardship

Strategy and approach

We believe business has a key role to play by bringing the best of what we have to meet human needs. Our sustainability commitments and initiatives aim to harness the full strength and reach of our global network, recognising the need to accelerate the pace of change. In 2018, we launched a new global climate change commitment across the PwC network, focused on our most material environmental impacts being energy and carbon emissions, and PwC China was among the first to fully adopt this.

While driving efficiency to reduce our absolute carbon impact, we commit to offsetting air travel emissions from July 2018, and to sourcing 100% renewables for our electricity consumption and offsetting residual energy use by June 2022.

We have also joined the RE100 initiative to demonstrate our commitment and leadership in the transition to renewables, provide a platform for future policy development, and inspire others.

Wherever possible we embed environmental considerations to existing systems and processes to ensure our efforts are sustained over the longer term. Externally, we use our capabilities, knowledge and networks to raise awareness of environmental issues within the business community, and bring together stakeholders to collaborate on relevant topics. We are also committed to assisting our clients to move towards more environmentally sustainable business models, and using our independent voice to drive systemic change and cross-sector collaboration.

Our environmental impact

Energy management

As an office-based business, energy use in our operations contributes a large portion of our total carbon footprint. Therefore, taking action to drive energy efficiency is one of our top agenda items to reduce the environmental impact of our business. In FY19, our absolute electricity consumption decreased for the first time, and our electricity efficiency has improved by 40% per capita, compared to FY11. Starting in FY19, we are sourcing renewable energy for 100% of our office electricity consumption, with I-REC Energy Attribute Certificates.

Carbon management

We have set ourselves a goal to reduce our carbon intensity, and in FY19 we have achieved 29% reduction in carbon emissions per capita since FY11. Starting in FY19, we are supporting carbon finance projects in China and Africa, to offset our unavoidable carbon emissions from business air travel. Find out more about our carbon performance.

Waste and recycling

We have been growing our environmental programme in response to stakeholder views, to include activities that align with circular economy principles. Waste causes serious problems to nature, so we are taking action to address our own waste footprint, and partnering with others who are working to divert valuable waste streams away from landfill.

Awareness raising

A large part of our environmental stewardship programme involves engaging our employees and raising awareness on environmental issues, inspiring individual behaviour change and facilitating meaningful interactions with the environment. In FY19, we organised a total of 43 environmental volunteering events, contributing 2,793 volunteering hours. Events include tree-planting events, waste-sorting events, and clean-up exercises. We have also established PwC Green Teams, a network that empowers our people to introduce environmental initiatives in their immediate workspace.

Every year we celebrate our Green Week campaign with a range of interactive activities to engage colleagues across our offices in mainland China and Hong Kong. In FY19, we worked with WWF to screen a new film inspired by the Our Planet Netflix series - Our Planet: Our Business.