DLA Piper trying to reduce travel by using more videoconferencing

Daily Record, The (Baltimore), Jan 25, 2008 by Caryn Tamber

DLA Piper, an international law firm with offices in Baltimore, has instituted a series of environmentally-minded reforms collectively known as the Global Sustainability Initiative. The changes the firm touts include:

--Getting certified under the international green-business standard ISO 40001;

--Reducing business travel through the use of videoconferencing;

--Purchasing carbon offsets for unavoidable business travel;

--Buying duplexer printers to print on both sides of a piece of paper;

--Buying 35-percent recycled paper;

--Promising to recycle 90 percent of office waste;

--Offering a bonus to associates who buy or lease a hybrid;

--Offering a bonus to staff members who change the way they commute to work to something more environmentally-friendly and maintain the new method for at least 60 days;

--Putting up signs above light switches reminding people to turn off the lights;

--Adjusting temperatures in the office to use less energy for heating and cooling;

--Installing motion-sensor lighting;

--Using Energy Star-compliant office machines.

DLA Piper boasts that it is the first global law firm to get ISO 40001 certification, but the experts explained that ISO 40000 and its progeny simply mean a company has developed processes for becoming greener. In itself, it does not testify to the environmental friendliness of a particular business.

A company could be "sued by every environmental group in the land and be polluting in ways that are inappropriate and still be ISO- compliant," Joel Makower said. "It's like saying you have accounting standards in place even though you're cooking the books."

The experts cheered the firm's philosophy on travel, praising its efforts to avoid travel before it turns to offsets. Makower said companies must be careful when purchasing carbon offsets. It isn't an offset if it's a carbon-reducing action that would have happened anyway, he said.

"Not all offsets are equal, and the key to an offset is that the money is going to pay for something that wouldn't have happened if you hadn't put the money up," he said.

On DLA Piper's use of paper that is 35-percent recycled, Jennifer Woofter said that the quality and price of recycled paper has improved so much in recent years that there is "no reason" companies should not aim to use 100-percent recycled paper.

The experts liked DLA Piper's pledge to give a bonus to employees who buy hybrid cars or start taking public transportation to work.

"What they're doing is more than getting one [hybrid] car on the road; they're possibly getting more cars on the road, because their employees have their own social networks," Jane Wolfson said. "When you get big people buying in, they become trendsetters. If it can help the environment and help the company, it can't hurt at all."

Woofter suggested that the hybrid incentive program might have even more impact if the firm linked hybrid-driving to parking privileges, giving premium spots to Toyota Prius or Honda Insight owners.

So far, 23 employees worldwide have taken advantage of the incentive program, though none of those people are in Baltimore.

Woofter said she likes DLA Piper's strategy of reminding employees to turn off the lights when they leave a room, but she said the firm should check to see if the signs above light switches are having an effect. She said the firm can do this by asking maintenance staff to check whether unoccupied rooms are dark and by comparing its utility bills now with the bills from before the signs went up.

Woofter also liked the fact that DLA Piper has adjusted its temperature. She said such a measure is especially effective when a company relaxes its dress code so employees do not have to sweat it out in suits during the summer, a step DLA Piper has taken.

Makower was not impressed with DLA Piper's vow to use only those machines that meet the government's Energy Star efficiency standard.

"It's almost hard to find a machine that isn't Energy Star compliant in certain categories," Makower said.