Corporate Social Responsibility Report
Our Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) strategy is an integral part of our ‘We try harder.’ philosophy.
2007 saw further good progress in our efforts to reduce our impact on the environment. This resulted from a greater awareness amongst management and staff of our responsibility for the environment and of the business benefits of reducing and mitigating our environmental impacts. It also reflected a growing demand from customers, from individuals to corporate clients, to do so.
Our strategy is to ensure we progressively reduce our CO2 emissions in our premises, offset non-reducible emissions and continue to introduce less polluting vehicles onto our fleet where possible. Our European corporately-owned operations and some of our licensees are already carbon neutral. We have guidelines in place for reducing energy use in our operations and in 2008 we will begin a rolling programme of targeted environmental audits, starting with our Group and operational headquarters in the UK.
During 2007 the centralised data collection process, under which the Group’s utility bills are submitted to our Budapest shared service centre, began to bear fruit. We are now better able to analyse performance and identify where there is most scope for action to reduce energy use and also to reduce costs. We continue to face challenges in setting overall targets for energy consumption because in many of our rental stations, particularly at airports, we have limited or almost no ability directly to affect our energy use in that we are often sharing a building with other users. As we improve further our data collection and begin to see the results of the energy audits, we will continue to review options for target-setting moving forwards.
On community matters, corporately-owned operations continue to focus their efforts on the provision of vehicles for community purposes and local environmental improvements, whilst local management have discretion to support local staff volunteering and fundraising for causes of their choice.
In our marketplace, we continue to be leaders in the adoption and development of best practice in many aspects of our customer service. In the workplace we focus on continual improvement in employee satisfaction, which together with customer satisfaction, is essential for the longer-term success of the Company.
Company values are set out in our statement of business principles (see www.avis-europe.com).
We are a member of the FTSE4Good Index and the Kempen/SNS Smallcap SRI Europe Index.
Managing CSR
Board level responsibility for CSR rests with the Group HR and Corporate Affairs Director. In our corporately-owned operations, CSR management and monitoring is assigned to local management. Environmental champions were recently appointed in these countries to drive forward our activity in these areas. For licensee countries, Regional Licensee Directors are responsible for promoting alignment with Group CSR principles and policies.
Environmental impacts
We remain committed to reducing, where possible, our negative impacts on the environment, of which by far the greatest are greenhouse gas emissions. Our European corporate operations and some of our licensees are CarbonNeutral¨ and we continue to introduce less polluting vehicles onto our fleet.
We measure these impacts internally and our data is reviewed and analysed by the independent Edinburgh Centre for Carbon Management working with The Carbon Neutral Company.
In 2007 emissions from our corporately-owned operations amounted to 13,285 tCO2e, a reduction of 4.5%.
| Year of assessment | Total (tCO2e)* | |
| 2003 | 14,552 | |
| 2004 | 15,711 | |
| 2005 | 12,814 | |
| 2006** | 13,913 | |
| 2007 | 13,285 |
- * Data for prior years is restated as a result of the increased accuracy in the data collection process. Restatements primarily relate to data submitted by Germany.
- ** From 2006 onwards, the data includes emissions from our call centre in Barcelona and our shared service centre in Budapest.
Corporate operations
In 2007, our corporate operations took a series of steps to improve environmental performance, including:
- beginning the integration of environmental reporting into financial reporting using a new finance system, which will track utility use and business travel;
- successfully implementing both environmental and quality management systems in Spain, which have been successfully audited to ISO 14001 and ISO 9001 respectively;
- increasing the use of videoconferencing between our Group headquarters in Bracknell and our other country corporate head offices; and
- making better use of resources and making all staff aware of what they can do to reduce energy use.
We offset our emissions in 2007 in conjunction with The Carbon Neutral Company. An increased proportion, some 90% of the total, was through renewable energy and technology projects (see below). Of these, 10% qualified as Kyoto Protocol compliant credits. The remaining offset was via tree planting. Since 2000, we have offset over 108,000 tonnes of CO2.
Case study: Rhine-Ruhr Waste Gas Power Project, Germany
During 2007 Avis helped fund a project to capture methane from three abandoned coal mines in the Rhine and Ruhr. The methane, which is 21 times more potent than CO2 as a greenhouse gas, is used to generate electricity and heat. The electricity is sold to the grid and the heat used in a local district heating scheme. However, income from the sale of the electricity and heat does not provide an economic return. The Avis assisted funding helps make the project become financially viable. In 2006 and 2007 the project reduced emissions by 385,500 (tCO2e).
Fleet operations
We seek to minimise emissions from our fleet by introducing more environmentally friendly vehicles in more locations. In 2007 they have included:
- Ford flexi-fuel cars in France
- LPG fuelled Volkswagens in Italy
- BMW 1 series with stop-start technology in Spain
- Honda Civic hybrids in Germany and Portugal
- Toyota Prius in the UK
In addition, our vehicles are changed very regularly, over 90% every six months, which ensures that the latest low emission vehicles are included on the fleet. As a result of these and other changes, a significant proportion of 2007 fleet purchases already emit below 140g CO2 per km (the European norm for 2008/9).
In 2007, we have begun to provide several major clients with data, which allows them to quantify easily their carbon emissions from Avis rentals. We will work with such clients to reduce their carbon footprint in future years.
We are also helping individual customers to reduce their environmental impact. Our redesigned website makes it easier for them to make their journey carbon neutral when they book online. For the second year running, the number of customers using this service has risen by over 20% and continues to increase.
In Paris the OKIGO initiative, undertaken jointly with Vinci Park, allows customers who pay a subscription to have an Avis car available 24/7 in one of the many Vinci car parks. Since the launch of OKIGO in July 2007, with 20 cars in four car parks in Paris, it has already recruited over 500 members and expanded outside of Paris. Studies show that sharing a car in this way effectively replaces up to eight individual cars.
Avis Norway and Sweden maintain their eco ISO 14001 standard and Spain implemented management systems in accordance with ISO 9001 and 14001 in 2007.
Next