In 2007 Laing O'Rourke commissioned independent research by Neville Lake to review all that was available on a very topical environmental issue, Climate Change. We asked Neville to weed out the emotion from the facts. It appears from the results, now summarised in the video on this web site's home page, that there is very little debate about the factual evidence of climate change, even though some may debate the causes. While the first reaction to tackling climate change may be a sense of helplessness, the efforts of individuals and corporates - starting with small wins and growing to breakthroughs - will make a difference.

Laing O'Rourke is tackling the environment in a number of ways:

(1) Environmental Audits

We are ensuring that our site environmental audits continue to improve and we have set a target 95 per cent minimum score across the company.

(2) Setting corporate targets to reduce our impact on the environment

• Reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by 25 per cent by 2012
• Reduce our landfill waste by 20 per cent by 2012
• Established an ongoing reinvestment program of our carbon footprint into sustainable enterprises

(3) Choosing four projects to reduce greenhouse gas and landfill waste generated in our business