We are committed to managing our business in an environmentally conscientious way, which will result in real benefits to both the environment and the business.

This year, HomeServe has further committed to reducing its environmental impact. We are also actively managing responses to the challenges the Government's latest environmental targets present to our business, as well as complying with wider environmental legislation.

The Group Environmental Steering Committee, headed by our Chairman, Brian Whitty, has been instrumental in driving changes across the business over the past year. The committee members have ensured that the environmental strategy is aligned with wider business strategy and that key, environmentally beneficial projects have been progressed during the year.

The environmental plans that have been actioned in the past year will enable us to reduce our environmental impacts over the next 12 months in the following core areas:

• Transport (including our commercial fleet)
• Energy consumption
• Waste management at all of our sites
• Paper usage (both for marketing purposes and internal business requirements)

In addition, there is continued commitment by the business to implement the environmental management system, Group wide. In 2008, both HomeServe Glass and Locks and HomeServe Advanced Aluminium achieved the ISO14001 environmental management system accreditation. During 2009/10 it is intended that the UK Membership business will also seek this accreditation.

Our carbon footprint

HomeServe's carbon footprint for 2008/09 is 22,567 tCO₂-e.

To ensure that we continually improve our understanding of our environmental impacts, focus has to be, and will continue to be, placed on collating and analysing a wider cross section of environmental data. The data collated in 2008/09 has been utilised to determine HomeServe's carbon footprint.

HomeServe's carbon footprint has increased from 20,600 tCO₂-e in 2007/08 to 22,567 tCO₂-e. This increase was expected by the business due to business growth and because more robust measuring techniques have been put in place to ascertain the environmental impacts of the business. Going forward the strategic environmental focus for HomeServe is to reduce our environmental impact through better energy efficiency, improvements in fleet efficiencies and to reduce the amount of resources used and the waste we generate.