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To unlock shared value for both business and society, we are committed to investing in a low-carbon and nature-positive future.

Since beginning our environmental journey in 2007, we have continually set challenging goals in alignment with climate science—but we cannot do it alone. We are dedicated to enabling global cooperation among our people, our clients, our suppliers and our partners to achieve a low-carbon future. Together, we can help to transform our global economy into a more sustainable marketplace.

Our research shows that more than one-third (34%) of the world’s largest companies are now publicly committed to net-zero. In the UK, we are spearheading client initiatives including Net Zero City Sprints and decarbonising highly interdependent entities called “industrial clusters”. But climate change cannot be tackled without addressing nature loss. As we help our clients progress towards their net-zero goals, we must also protect nature and restore biodiversity in order to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement.

We are taking action for the environment through our ambitious goals on climate, waste and water, and are supporting nature-based carbon removal initiatives, as well as engaging our people to act for nature and biodiversity through our Eco Action initiative. We support projects that have converted marginal farmland to permanent woodland in Scotland and England, which is expected to lead to the creation of new and diversified sustainable forests.

Building on the success of the UK Get Nature Positive collaboration with Defra and the Council for Sustainable Business, we’re now working with strategic partner Business for Nature (BfN) to help global businesses take urgent action on nature through BfN’s 1100+ network of businesses committed to enhanced action on nature.

We are also a member of the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures Forum (TNFD), and have signed pledges from Terra Carta and Business for Nature, all of which continue to shape our strategy around environmental sustainability.

1. Our operations

We work closely with our suppliers and invest responsibly to reduce the impact of our operations.

All our UK facilities now use 100% renewable energy. We’ve also achieved 100% reuse and recycle in e-waste and 100% reuse and recycle in furniture and are now single-use plastic free across our UK locations. Although our direct impact on nature is low, due to our footprint being largely leased office space in urban areas, we are working to reduce the potential causes of harm to nature.

We’ve set targets for our suppliers too. In 2019 we surpassed our initial goal, with 77% disclosing their emissions targets, and 82% sharing what action they are taking. Our new goal is for 90% of our suppliers to disclose their targets by 2025. We run 95% of our applications in the cloud and are working to help others become cloud-first.

Our environment goals and commitments

We are working to drive the rapid, urgent transformation that’s needed to tackle climate change.

UNGC business ambition for 1.5° pledge

We’ve joined 400+ companies in pledging to do our part to keep global warming below 1.5° Celsius.

Science-based target

We’ve set a target, approved by the Science Based Targets Initiative, to reduce our scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions by 11% by 2025.

Net-zero by the end of 2025

We have set a goal to achieve net-zero emissions by the end of 2025.

100% renewable energy

As part of the global RE100 initiative, we’re committed to using 100% renewable electricity by the end of 2023.

Responsible travel

We encourage our people to travel responsibly by using more carbon-efficient alternatives, such as rail, wherever possible.

Move to zero waste

We recycle 100% of our e-waste, as well as all our office furniture, and have eliminated single-use plastics in our UK locations.

Plan for water risk

We’re developing plans to reduce the impact of flooding, drought and water scarcity on our business and people in high-risk areas.​

2. Investing and buying responsibly

We’re investing in a world we want to live in. Accenture’s Pension Plan is investing in companies that perform well in ESG issues.

We believe that shares in companies that do well on ESG issues are more likely to outperform financially and remain resilient in the long term. The Plan’s default funds incorporate an element of sustainable investment based on a new innovative index developed by world-leading index provider MSCI.

Driving supplier sustainability

In our drive for responsible buying excellence, we work continuously through relevant networks with our industry peers and clients to adopt sustainable practices and are continually improving our supplier and contractor management processes. We encourage a responsible buying culture by advocating for supply chains that are more sustainable and inclusive, both inside and outside our company.

Developing a responsible supply chain

The size and scale of our supply chain affords us the opportunity to drive a culture of responsible buying. We continue to invest in new technology and processes to help us have greater visibility into the ESG performance of our suppliers.

Our Sustainable Procurement Hub and its platform, the Accenture True Supplier Marketplace, provide greater transparency from our direct suppliers about their own human rights policies, due diligence and inclusive practices.

Our new Supplier Sustainability Assessment aims to streamline the process of collecting ESG data. Through a user-friendly tool that standardises the collection of information, we can further centralise data and enable responsible buying while driving transparency. We’re growing our Global Supplier Inclusion & Sustainability Program alongside our ESG team to help all our suppliers to be more responsible. 

Sustainability accelerator

Our Sustainability Accelerator promises to bring the best of our carbon knowledge to our clients and suppliers. We’ve built a framework for measuring carbon impacts and dependencies in supplier chains, which could also be applied to nature and biodiversity. The team is currently focused on testing proof of concept with a handful of our clients and suppliers, before the programme is embedded into our procurement process and client offering. It will then be expanded to include other critical issues.

£963m

of Accenture’s Default Pension Funds are invested incorporating an element of ESG weightings as of 07/02/2023

3. Our clients

We believe that sustainability needs to be at the core of every business. We work with our clients from strategy through execution to tackle their greatest sustainability challenges by reinventing their businesses at scale.

We also support our clients by advising them on the right approach for their business, helping them to set science-based targets and designing roadmaps to meet both their commitments and disclosure expectations, so they can drive sustainable outcomes. Our ambition going forwards is to help our clients understand their nature impacts and dependencies, as well as how to minimise risk and maximise the benefits of taking action.

Net zero city sprints

Cities are on the front line for limiting global warming to well below 2°C. More than half of the global population live in cities, consuming more than 78% of the world’s primary energy and generating 70% of total carbon emissions.

Created in collaboration with the World Economic Forum, the Net Zero Carbon Cities programme is a cross-sectional initiative with the goal of creating an enabling environment for clean electrification and circularity, resulting in urban decarbonisation and resilience. The programme has developed the City Sprint methodology and Toolbox of Solutions to guide cities in their pursuit of net-zero.

The format enables stakeholders from both the public and private sector to identify and prioritise solutions to accelerate urban decarbonisation in the wider local area. We have so far completed three City Sprints across the UK and Ireland in Bristol, Cork and Manchester, with more planned throughout 2023.

Reducing emissions in industrial clusters

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Industrial clusters are critical to the UK’s low-carbon transition. The country’s six clusters are responsible for half of its industrial greenhouse gas emissions. A joint Accenture and Microsoft whitepaper estimates that a combination of approaches could slash emissions in these clusters by up to 40% by 2030. This presents an opportunity to unlock significant environmental, economic and societal value.

As highly interdependent entities, industrial clusters lend themselves well to collaborative working. Creating multi-stakeholder cross-industry partnerships is vital in devising, funding and delivering complex emissions-reduction solutions. As part of the Zero Carbon Humber project, 12 parties—energy producers, industry players, infrastructure operators, engineering firms and academic institutions—are working together to decarbonise the UK’s largest industrial cluster around the Humber Estuary. 

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Fighting food waste through digital collaboration

In the UK, 6.7 million tonnes of food goes to waste every year. For The Felix Project, who redistribute surplus food to over 1000 charitable organisations, concentrating their resources in an efficient and cost effective manner has always been a challenge. Together with Avanade and Microsoft, Accenture developed RouteMe, a digital route planner that enables The Felix Project’s network of volunteer drivers to deliver more food where it’s needed most.

Watch the video to learn more about how we’ve provided this vital not-for-profit with a dynamic technological platform on which to grow, supporting them to reach their target of redistributing over 100 million meals by 2024.

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Get nature positive

In a collaboration between Accenture, the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Council for Sustainable Business (CSB), we launched Get Nature Positive (GNP), a campaign and ‘handbook’ aiming to support businesses on their journey to protecting, restoring and sustainably using nature, and to position nature positive actions at the heart of net-zero strategies.

We partnered with global NGO Business for Nature, alongside their 75+ partners including the World Economic Forum (WEF), We Mean Business, World Business Council for Sustainable Development, International Chamber of Commerce, Capitals Coalition, WWF and many others to bring GNP to a global audience as part of broader efforts to scale and speed up business action to address nature loss. The campaign has now ended, but the Get Nature Positive content (and more) is still available at Business for Nature.

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COP26: Accelerating non-state action

Held more than 30 in-person and live broadcasts from Glasgow over 12 days focused on measurable actions businesses can take now to become more sustainable.

Telco vehicle fleet electrification strategy

Developed strategy for European Telco to electrify its large commercial vehicle fleet to meet an ambitious greenhouse gas emissions reduction target.

Carbon neutral road map for auto parts maker

Identified and quantified how to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030—modelling costs and carbon impact of measures including circular design.

COP15: Develop action strategy for business

Co-facilitated a workshop with Business for Nature, helping businesses understand what they need to scale and speed up action on nature.

Counting puffins

Avanade, a joint venture between Accenture and Microsoft, helped create a monitoring system that uses AI to count birds nesting on Scotland’s Isle of May.

Terra Carta Seal

We’ve been awarded the Terra Carta Seal in recognition of our commitment to the creation of genuinely sustainable markets through innovation.

The Circular Economy solution

According to Accenture’s Circular Economy Handbook, humans currently consume 75% more resources each year than our planet can naturally regenerate. In a circular economy, growth is decoupled from the consumption of scarce or finite resources. By sourcing raw materials in a sustainable way, and designing products with circularity in mind, we can prevent waste, reduce the amount of land needed for farming and mining, and regenerate nature. Business practices that damage biodiversity and create pollution will simply not be tolerated in the future.

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4. Our people and communities

Innovation is central to how we engage our people and communities around interconnected environmental and social issues.

We are working with our clients and ecosystem partners to harness and accelerate innovative ideas with us and nurture the next generation of innovators. In 2022, more than 15,000 Accenture people globally participated in our Social Innovators initiative, which includes the Sustainability Innovation Challenge, the Social Innovators Accelerator programme and Social Innovation Learning opportunities. Our Sustainability Innovation Challenge is designed to harness our people’s expertise and passion while equipping them with new skills.

From connections and coaching to funding and execution, our year-round Social Innovators Accelerator is designed to implement ideas that address four priority areas: disaster response and humanitarian relief; jobs and skills; inclusion and diversity; and environmental challenges.

Expanding our carbon literacy with Green Skills

A meaningful response to climate change requires a transformation of how we live and work. And understanding the complex science behind this issue can help us get there.

When it comes to achieving our sustainability goals, we know that guidance is often needed to translate passion into action. So we created a carbon and climate literacy programme to guide our people on their personal journey towards more sustainable living.

The initiative complements our Sustainability Quotient training, which enables our people to put sustainability at the heart of their work. This allows them to help clients find solutions that are optimal for communities and the environment, as well as making sound business sense. We want to empower all our people to improve their knowledge around these vital topics, while underlining our commitments as a business. 

Sustainability innovation challenge

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We’re innovating to contribute towards a more sustainable, nature-positive future. Our Sustainability Innovation Challenge, a six-month competition, invites Accenture teams from across the world to harness their expertise and passions to address some of the world's greatest environmental and social issues.

Reimagine, Rewild was one of seven winning ideas in our 2021 Challenge, aiming to accelerate the rewilding of land through an augmented reality mobile app. We created a three-part series to tell the story of the team’s journey and to promote the benefits of biodiversity. The 2022 Challenge saw over 1,400 ideas submitted across seven challenge themes, including the future of energy, the future of food, and the future of climate action education.

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Increasing our knowledge of nature

Our Nature Coaches initiative aims to raise the baseline level of our people’s knowledge and understanding of nature. We want to give everyone the confidence to be able to have conversations about the best practices for nature, so they advise our clients and spot where the opportunities are for them.

Unlocking power in local communities

ChangeX use technology to connect people with proven ideas for strengthening communities, while providing financial resources to empower community leaders to tackle issues at a local level. Having been successfully piloted in Ireland last year, ChangeX launched in the UK (Bristol, Leeds and Scotland) in 2023. With Accenture’s support, it is estimated that local communities within these regions could activate around 75 projects from six shortlisted options.

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Blue Earth Summit

We hosted a “Nature Hackathon”, using design thinking techniques to generate ideas to solve the biggest challenges affecting nature in the UK. Read more.

Scotland’s Young People’s Forest

Innovative reforestation project, supporting young people to be leaders in tackling climate change and biodiversity, through education. Read more.