We have taken a significant first step in our decarbonization journey in our first year of business by establishing our emissions baseline, which has helped us to reflect on the operational practices we have implemented at the outset of our firm to evaluate whether they were effective in helping us keep our carbon footprint as low as possible, and achieving carbon neutrality.
We recognize that while significant it is still our first step. There is still lots to tackle, and here are some of the improvements we strive to make in the coming year:
- Our current GHG emissions inventory captures some of the material components of the emissions arising from our business activities, where information reflected is to the best of our knowledge in terms of the data we are readily able to obtain. However, it is still not able to cover all of our material emissions and data quality for some of the items could still be improved, for instance:
- The figures we have used to represent the GHG emissions from our outsourced IT support services and accounting services are proxy figures only calculated using the spend-based method via the Scope 3 Evaluator developed by GHG Protocol and Quantis. We will need to improve the quality of this data by engaging vendors in our supply chain to collect the necessary data. As a start up with limited bargaining power, we are figuring out how we may approach this to effectively engage our vendors on the topic of decarbonization.
- Our GHG emissions inventory does not include GHG emissions coming from our clients. We are working to develop a strategy to collect the necessary data from our clients, and expanding our inventory to include this crucial data.
- The figures we have used to represent the GHG emissions from our outsourced IT support services and accounting services are proxy figures only calculated using the spend-based method via the Scope 3 Evaluator developed by GHG Protocol and Quantis. We will need to improve the quality of this data by engaging vendors in our supply chain to collect the necessary data. As a start up with limited bargaining power, we are figuring out how we may approach this to effectively engage our vendors on the topic of decarbonization.
- We are currently about to achieve carbon neutrality, but there is still a difference between carbon neutrality and net zero carbon. We will look to source RECs and removal-type carbon credits that deliver high additionality to strengthen our decarbonization efforts, and to reach our goals to become a net zero carbon law firm.
- We will strengthen our decarbonization commitment by committing to our net-zero target through SBTi.
- We have put our focus on decarbonization and less so on waste initiatives in the prior year. In the coming year, we will improve our waste tracking and upgrade our recycling initiatives to make our operations more circular.
We have reached for the lowest hanging fruit in our first year. The challenges in tackling decarbonization are just about to begin. We will continue to work hard to contribute to the global low-carbon transition through our work and internal decarbonization efforts.
