Sustainability at CMS

CMS have renegotiated electricity contracts to maximise supply from renewable sources – all UK offices now run on 100% renewable electricity. They are now working to replicate this across all their international offices. The firm have also reduced energy consumption in the following ways:

• Conducting annual energy audits in all UK offices to assess how energy is being used, where it is being wasted and what changes can be implemented to improve energy efficiency.
• Sourcing new printers that reduce the carbon footprint on the previous model used by 46%
•  All monitors are turned off every evening by their facilities staff to reduce energy wastage
• LED Retrofit - Compact fluorescent luminaires are very inefficient in terms of cost and environmental impact. It was identified that by replacing these with LED equivalents it will greatly reduce the cost of electricity as well as the impact on the environment via way of much lower carbon emissions.

Through their partnership with PrintReleaf, CMS plants trees in reforestation projects around the world to offset their use of paper. As a result, the firm has offset the equivalent of 141,156,157 total standard pages of paper consumption by reforesting 16,939 standard trees since joining the PrintReleaf Exchange in 2019. A pilot scheme of Surface Go tablets is currently underway to trial a paperless approach to marking up large documents and taking hand-written notes, with the goal of enabling a completely paperless lawyer. In 2020, CMS UK and their international offices modified their global business travel policy to align and support their approved science-based target to reduce Scope 3 emissions by 30% by 2025. Key changes to the revised policy include;

• all travel must be booked through the designated travel agency who report monthly on carbon emissions;
• non air travel will be favoured where this is timely and feasible

CMS’ suite of promotional items meet strict criteria to ensure they are environmentally friendly and have been manufactured by responsible organisations. All the firm’s giveaways have been chosen to meet their new Reimagine criteria: to use sustainable materials, be recyclable and produced by responsible manufacturers. The firm no longer produces paper brochures and has moved all such marketing online.

Sustainability Insights | United Kingdom | international law firm CMS