Realising our strategy

Development and implementation of our strategy is overseen by our Environment Executive Committee. The committee is chaired by an executive director of the Pearson plc board, and includes senior executives from operations, communications and those leading implementation across the company. Progress is reported to the main Board annually.

We have a network of country-specific committees supported by 40 eco-committees at our key buildings that look for additional opportunities for improvement. In the US, a small central environmental team is supported by networks with responsibility for reducing our impact from our buildings, business travel and employee engagement.

We commission comprehensive reviews of our buildings identifying opportunities for reduction. Building on these reviews, we have established an online data collection system for utility and water billing in the US, the UK and Australia. We are looking to extend this system to include the rest of Europe and South Africa during 2012.

Environmental management

Pearson has had an environmental policy since 1992. Our businesses in the UK are accredited against ISO 14001, the international environmental management standard, and the businesses in Australia also achieved accreditation in 2011.

We will introduce this into other countries or businesses by consulting local business heads and stakeholders. Other parts of the world apply our own environmental management system, which we describe on our website.

We have also embraced LEED, the green buildings standard in the United States and our UK operations are accredited against the Carbon Trust Standard.

We now have six buildings certified under the LEED standard and are targeting more for 2012.