Our building
Our offices are within Land Securities’ New Street Square scheme which has sustainability at the centre of its design. Some of the key environmental features during the development were:
- 93% of demolition materials reused or recycled
- 180 tonnes of carpet tiles reused in charity housing projects
- 100% of timber from demonstrably sustainable sources
- a sustainability charter with monthly audits
- a green wall
- 392 internal bicycle parking spaces.
We are located at 6 New Street Square and the our building has an 'Excellent' BREEAM rating. BREEAM - Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method - is the most widely used environmental assessment method for buildings, which sets the standards for best practice in sustainable development.
Reducing our waste
Waste has a huge impact on the environment and Speechly Bircham has a strong objective to reduce waste wherever possible, and to reuse or recycle more of our waste. At our new offices at New Street Square, our bin arrangements ensure that all waste is divided into wet and dry waste. This has enabled our landlord to achieve a very high recycling rate. We are constantly seeking new ways to reduce our waste.
A good example of how we are reducing our waste is through our disposable drinking cup usage. If on average each person uses one plastic and two paper cups per day, annually the firm uses 82,250 plastic cups and 164,500 paper cups, which is a huge cost to the environment. We have decided to remove all these cups and replace them with personal drinking cups for each person to use everyday.
Reducing our energy consumption
Our aim is to use energy as efficiently as possible throughout all areas of the firm and look for new initiatives to help us achieve this. By recording our energy consumption and efficiency annually we are able to set ourselves challenging performance improvement targets, to view our 2010 environmental targets, please click here.
Our new premises at New Street Square have been carefully planned to include various energy efficient measures to improve energy utilisation. We continue to promote energy conservation across the firm to raise awareness to all employees. For example, there are controls in each area/room to ensure that lights automatically turn themselves off when not required.
Awards for our building
The New Street Square development, in which our new offices are positioned and Land Securities, the Square's developers won City Development of the Year in the Property Week Office Development Awards in 2008.
We are also pleased that the New Street Square development won Sustainable Development of the Year in the Building Magazine Sustainability Awards for 2008.