Better to stay put... than to travel

By Andrew Noon on Oct 16, 08 03:25 PM

As part of DLA Piper's Global Sustainability Initiative, a firm wide TravelSMART campaign is running from Monday October 6, through to Friday October 31 2008.

The aim of the campaign is to encourage alternatives to travel and promote technology solutions - such as web and videoconferencing - which are less damaging to the environment, less time consuming, less stressful on participants and more cost effective. The campaign will also promote more environmentally friendly forms of travel, such as public transportation, when travel is required.

Travel is one of the DLA Piper's key environmental impact areas - along with energy, waste and procurement. One of the core commitments of our Global Sustainability Initiative is to focus on reducing our impact in these areas. TravelSMART is one way in which we are doing this. It follows the success of our first campaign earlier in 2008, named 'Reduce, Reuse, Recycle'.

DLA Piper's commitment to sustainability issues is real, tangible, committed and ever expanding; being excellent providers of a service is no longer enough (in our view), law firms also need to question how they deliver that service and question whether it can be achieved in a way which reduces the impact on the environment. DLA Piper is one of the originators of the Legal Sector Alliance, a group of like-minded law firms who want to set benchmarks for law firms to conduct their business in a sustainable fashion. Green issues are increasingly important on political and business agendas but there is still some way to go before sustainability questions are the first to be asked when considering a policy, plan or strategy.

Hopefully, where DLA Piper leads, others will follow (but using an environmentally sounds means of transport!).