Lee & Thompson is committed to minimising the impact of its activities on the environment.

We take our environmental obligations extremely seriously.  We strive to reduce the effect our business has on the environment, to reduce our overall carbon emissions and ensure that our staff understand the obligations we have under this policy.

We commenced our 11-year lease at 80 Charlotte Street in 2020.  It is a Derwent building which we are proud to occupy given its strong sustainability credentials.  These include air source heat pumps on the roof that provide heating and cooling and therefore avoid the need for traditional gas boilers which are more carbon intensive.  There are also solar thermal panels on the roof which heat the domestic hot water reducing the building’s requirement for grid electricity.

Within Lee & Thompson we focus as much as possible on initiatives and purchasing that maximise reuse and recycling as well as reducing waste.  We have created an environmental focus group that assesses our current environmental position, sets objectives and milestones.

The key points of our strategy to achieve our environmental aims are as follows:

• We recycle our waste paper. Every member of staff has a paper recycling bin near to their workspace. The paper placed in these bins is ultimately removed and recycled by a specialist accredited recycling company.
• We do not buy recycled paper for quality reasons, but the paper we do buy uses sustainable pulp and less of it, less water for manufacturing and it is transported via greener methods.
• We recycle our waste plastic, glass, cardboard, batteries, printer toners and aluminium via communal recycling points which are regularly emptied into council owned recycling facilities. Additionally, recycling points facilities for food and coffee grounds can be found at all tea points / kitchens.
• The firm uses paperless filing systems and staff are encouraged to consider whether it is necessary to print documents and, if it is necessary, to print double-sided whenever they are able.
• We use a cold and hot water filter system connected to our mains water supply which operates in place of bottled water transported from source and removes the need to repeatedly boil water. This has reduced our consumption of both energy and water.
• Throughout our offices we have motion sensors which switch ceiling and wall lights off automatically after a short period of time when no-one is in the zone, helping us to minimise our consumption of electricity.
• Staff are told to ensure that all the electrical equipment they have been using during the day is switched off when they leave the office. Wherever possible staff are encouraged to switch equipment off at the wall.