Geisha Kow­lessar-Alon­zo

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

PwC firms across the Caribbean have com­mit­ted to off­set 100 per­cent of their busi­ness, air trav­el and en­er­gy con­sump­tion to sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duce their car­bon foot­print.

Through this trans­for­ma­tive ini­tia­tive, PwC firms op­er­at­ing in The Ba­hamas, Bermu­da, British Vir­gin Is­lands, Cay­man Is­lands, East Caribbean, Ja­maica, T&T and Turks and Caicos, have each made the pledge to re­duce ab­solute car­bon im­pact while dri­ving ef­fi­cient­ly.

In a state­ment Zia Pa­ton, Ad­vi­so­ry Part­ner and Cor­po­rate Re­spon­si­bil­i­ty Leader, PwC T&T ex­plained, “PwC in the Caribbean is set­ting an ex­am­ple and demon­strat­ing that busi­ness­es have a key op­por­tu­ni­ty to grow de­mand for clean en­er­gy across the globe.

“We are proud to adopt this proac­tive ini­tia­tive im­ple­ment­ed by the PwC glob­al net­work as we do our part in min­imis­ing the en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact from our op­er­a­tions.”

She not­ed the com­pa­ny was al­so en­gag­ing peo­ple to raise aware­ness of sus­tain­abil­i­ty is­sues and en­cour­ag­ing them to take ac­tion to re­duce their own en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pacts.

“This un­der­scores our over­all per­spec­tive as PwC in the Caribbean al­ready sup­ports a num­ber of en­vi­ron­men­tal and sus­tain­abil­i­ty-fo­cused non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tions through­out the re­gion,” Pa­ton added.

PwC’s en­vi­ron­men­tal ini­tia­tives around the Caribbean in­clude PwC T&T com­plet­ed ren­o­va­tion of its Port-of-Spain of­fice to re­duce en­er­gy con­sump­tion.

The firm now oc­cu­pies four floors in­stead of five and has in­stalled mo­tion-sen­sor lights and air con­di­tion­ing timers.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, all meet­ing rooms are equipped with au­dio and video con­fer­ence tech­nol­o­gy to en­cour­age em­ploy­ees to use on­line meet­ing fo­rums and re­duce their lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al trav­el needs, the state­ment said.

“As an added ben­e­fit, this flex­i­bil­i­ty is great­ly ap­pre­ci­at­ed by PwC’s em­ploy­ees since it re­duces tran­sit-re­lat­ed stress and en­cour­ages greater pro­duc­tiv­i­ty,” the state­ment added.

It said with the col­lec­tive sup­port of part­ner firms in Ja­maica, Bar­ba­dos, Ba­hamas and T&T, PwC was the sus­tain­abil­i­ty spon­sor sup­port­ing the cli­mate change and risk re­duc­tion pre­sen­ta­tion at the 37th In­sti­tute of Char­tered Ac­coun­tants of the Caribbean (ICAC) Con­fer­ence of Ac­coun­tants held re­cent­ly in Ja­maica.

PwC Bermu­da is al­so tak­ing ac­tion to sup­port a more sus­tain­able fu­ture by in­vest­ing in a num­ber of en­vi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty ini­tia­tives such as ‘clean parks’.

PwC Bermu­da has off­set its no sin­gle-use plas­tics and switch­ing to en­er­gy-ef­fi­cient light bulbs.

PwC Cay­man Is­lands has con­tin­ued its sup­port for shark and PwC Ba­hamas has in­vest­ed in reusable PwC wa­ter bot­tles, cof­fee mugs, plates, cups and uten­sils for staff at its of­fice.

“These com­mit­ments are in recog­ni­tion of the need to ac­cel­er­ate the pace of change when it comes to man­ag­ing our car­bon foot­print and con­tribut­ing to cre­at­ing and main­tain­ing sus­tain­able and thriv­ing com­mu­ni­ties,” Pa­ton added.