WPR
About Us

Our ESG Plan: Planet

GIVING BACK MORE
TO OUR PLANET THAN WE TAKE

We are proud to be a certified B Corporation™ and both a plastic-neutral and carbon-neutral company, having offset the carbon footprints of our entire team across both their personal and their professional lives, and ceased purchasing consumables containing plastic and palm oil wherever it is possible. Working with Carbon Neutral Britain and RePurpose Global, we now invest in some of the most innovative environmental projects across the world.

That said, we recognise that offsetting our carbon emissions and plastic consumption is only part of the answer. If we are to truly improve our environmental performance and reduce our environmental impact, we must reduce our carbon footprint by cutting our CO2 emissions, only buying products we truly need and sourcing locally whenever we can.

carbon emissions

In our drive to be net zero by the end of 2028, we have set the following targets:

 202320242025202620272028
Target CO2114,00099,00075,00045,00025,00011,400
Actual CO2107,000–––––

TO DATE WE HAVE:

  • Installed a new heating system that is 60% more efficient than our previous arrangement
  • Used the environmental strand of our learning and development programme to help our team understand how to work sustainably from home, and how to reduce plastic in our lives
  • Launched incentives to reduce commuting by car
  • Introduced multi-layered plastic recycling for items brought into the office by colleagues and clients (MLP is the most difficult plastic to recycle)
  • Started overhauling our outdoor space to include a vegetable garden, fruit trees and wildflowers
  • Invested in composting equipment to dispose of all food waste, thereby creating organic matter for our new gardens
  • Launched green improvement loans, helping our team members to live more sustainably at home

PLANS ARE NOW IN PLACE TO:

  • Insulate our building, taking the office from an EPC rating of D to B
  • Ensure all our electricity comes from renewable sources
  • Invest in water butts to service our vegetable garden and orchard
  • Install water efficient toilets and taps
  • Introduce glass recycling
  • Install solar panels
  • Move to a zero waste to landfill collection service
  • Calculate our water consumption and invest in drought-prone places across the world

ENVIRONMENTALLY PREFERABLE PURCHASING POLICY

Central to our ESG commitments is our Environmentally Preferable Purchasing Policy (EPP).

Ahead of making any purchase, all team members must ask themselves:

  1. Reduce: do we really need the item?
  2. Reuse: if we do really need the product, can we borrow instead of buying new?
  3. Recycle: if we do need to buy new, is there an end-of-life recycling option?

Wider EPP policies include:

Travel

If three or fewer people are travelling to a meeting, using public transport is the more environmentally friendly option and team members should give preference to trains and buses, if logistically possible.

If four or five people are travelling together, by car is the greener option. Our rule here is one meeting, one car – with team members meeting as close to the set off point as possible, to minimise individual travel. This is a rule than can only be broken under exceptional circumstances.

TEAM REFRESHMENTS, FOOD & EVENTS

Everything we buy for our team to eat and drink within our walls is fair-trade sourced, palm oil-free and, wherever possible, not packaged in plastic. Where we can, we source locally.

We provide alternative items with a lower carbon footprint, such as oat milk, and educate our team on the environmental benefits of vegan substitutes over their dairy counterparts.

When we venture outside our building, we always prioritise venues that reflect our values and principles, and work with suppliers to deliver events that have the least impact on the planet possible.

CLIENT & COLLEAGUE GIFTS

All gifts purchased for our clients or colleagues meet our values and principles – with suppliers including Love Cocoa, so a tree is planted for every gift we send out, and Arena Flowers, the UK’s most ethical florist.

CLIENT PURCHASES

When a client asks that we buy something on their behalf, we do all we can to ensure the purchases are in line with our agency values.

CLIENT MEETINGS

As our clients have come to know, we provide fair-trade sourced, palm oil- and plastic-free snacks in our meetings, working with B Corp suppliers where possible, and opting for brands including Tony’s Chocolonely, Two Farmers, Clipper Tea and Kingdom Coffee. It is proving harder to source 100% plastic-free lunches. The search continues but we are doing what we can to eliminate / reduce plastic packaging in the meantime.

Our EPP client and team policy extends to our bathrooms, with soap from Raindrop Clean and toilet roll from Serious Tissues.

OFFICE SUPPLIES

WFH equipment includes a laptop, monitor, mouse, keyboard, laptop riser and chair. When a team member leaves us for pastures new, we re-distribute their equipment within the agency. If it is no longer fit for purpose, we will dispose of it in the most considerate way possible.

Again, it is our policy to buy plastic free whenever we can and, ideally, to choose B Corp suppliers. Our pens, notepads, laptop stands, phone covers and the like are plastic free. When we can’t buy plastic free, we source options as low in plastic content as possible.

To cut wastage, we are strict with the dishing out of pens and notepads, reminding the team to ask themselves the “reduce, reuse, recycle” questions before buying anything.

We discourage printing too. Everyone on the team has second screens both at work and home. When we do need to print anything in the office, which is rare, it is on agency-supplied paper, which is either recycled or from recognised sustainable forest programmes.

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