About James & Wells > Corporate Responsibility

Environmental Sustainability Journey

The long-term health of New Zealand's environment depends on all of us making the effort to reduce our impact on it - both as individuals, and as companies and organisations.

Our partners have committed to taking James & Wells on a path to a more environmentally sustainable business. We do IP work for a lot of companies which are at the forefront of clean technology innovation, and this has challenged us to examine our own processes.

We have started essentially from scratch, but have already been recognised for our achievements by being a finalist in the 2011 Sustainable Business Network Awards, both in the Northern Region, and in the national awards. External recognition of our commitment is gratifying, as we aim for best-practise.

"When we decided to become more sustainable, we didn't want to go into it half-hearted, which is why we decided to get CEMARS certified, join SBN and the New Zealand Business Council for Sustainable Development."
Simon Rowell, Partner, James & Wells Intellectual Property

Sustainable Business Committee

Driving our journey will be the Sustainable Business Committee, which has representatives from each of our offices. Its remit will include considering building supplier relationships with companies which can also demonstrate a commitment to corporate responsibility.

At the core of this is the newly approved Sustainable Business Plan, which will be our blueprint on the journey. So far, James & Wells have adopted the use of video conferencing in all offices to reduce domestic travel; and made a move to a paperless office in Christchurch, which may be rolled out through other offices.

The feedback report from the SBN's 2011 Get Sustainable Challenge provided measurements of our environmental reporting and sustainability measures which we can use as benchmarks to improve  and refine our environmental efforts.

CEMARS® certification

Going through the CEMARS certification process through Landcare Research will require us to measure our carbon footprint and put reduction plans in place. This will be an interesting exercise for our firm, and ingrain sustainability throughout the organisation. This is expected to be completed early 2012.

World Environment Day

To launch our sustainable business programme and to mark World Environment day, we declared Friday, 3 June 2011 a 'car free day' at our four offices around the country. About 90 per cent of our staff usually drive to work, and the car-less day aimed to get everyone in the firm thinking about ways they can take individual and collective action to achieve their sustainability goals.

Between them, our staff saved about 500km of travel (about 100kg of greenhouse gas emissions and a lot of petrol cost) on the day - 81 per cent of the Auckland office didn't bring their car in, taking out the inter-office challenge.

Those who couldn't leave their cars at home found a surprise waiting for them in their usual car park spot - a tree.  A community based environmental education organisation called Kaipatiki Project and Waikato Environment Centre donated the trees.

Staff at the Auckland office wrapped its office car in tape to force its team to think about alternative ways to travel to appointments, and the Hamilton office put a chain around its car.

Next steps

The Sustainable Business Network has provided some valuable advice about how to integrate sustainability into the business on an everyday basis. This includes the inclusion of sustainability Key Performance Indicators into performance reviews, the inclusion of sustainability in staff inductions and operational manuals, and the development of formal policies for Sustainable Purchasing, Energy, Travel, and Waste.