Maurice Blackburn

Maurice Blackburn believes in protecting the environment and we are working hard to be a sustainable law firm. A key aspect of this is achieving carbon neutrality through measuring, minimising and managing our carbon emissions.

The process for becoming carbon neutral involves three steps:

1.      Measure
This step involves establishing emissions targets and committing to annual audits of carbon emissions.

Each year Maurice Blackburn undertakes an extensive process to measure our environmental performance and carbon emissions through a wide-ranging audit of all offices, practices and procedures. The audit identifies the amount of greenhouse gas produced by the firm and the major contributors to these emissions.

2.      Reduce
Maurice Blackburn has introduced a sustainability policy to reduce the energy consumption and waste produced by the day-to-day operations of our offices. This policy identifies many energy and waste reducing initiatives which have, and will continue to be, implemented on an ongoing basis.

We are also implementing an Environmental Management System (EMS) that will allow the firm to identify the environmental impacts resulting from our business activities and improve environmental performance on a long-term basis.

3.      Offset
In the final step to achieve carbon neutrality, independent sustainability and carbon management consultancy Pangolin Associates calculated the greenhouse gas emissions. These emissions were associated with the firm's electricity usage, flights, waste sent to landfill, taxi usage, telecommunications, internet usage, office paper, postage, printing and freight (scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions) for the 2009 -2010 financial year. 

The calculated emissions were then offset by the purchase and retirement of Voluntary Carbon Units issued under the Verified Carbon Standard Program. The offsets purchased by Maurice Blackburn are from the Tamil Naidu wind power project in India. This project provides emission free electricity generation through the installation of wind electric generators.

Maurice Blackburn is committed to protecting the environment and maintaining carbon neutrality and we will continue the process of measuring, reducing and offsetting carbon emissions every year.