The purpose of the British Council is to build engagement and trust for the UK through the exchange of knowledge and ideas between people worldwide. We work in 3 programme areas:

Intercultural dialogue
Creative and knowledge economy
Climate change

We recognise that our activities can have an impact on the environment and as such, we are committed to improving our environmental performance and minimising that impact. To help us achieve this objective, we are participating in the British Council's Environmental Framework Tool in order to review our environmental performance and to set targets for improvement.

We will achieve this by:

Identifying and understanding the range of environmental impacts arising from our activities
Ensuring that we comply with all relevant environment legislation and any other national obligations and requirements
Ensuring that our staff, at all levels, understand our policy and work towards its implementation and achievement
Communicating our commitment to and progress in minimising our environmental impact to all stakeholders, both internal and external
Ensuring that our environmental impact is a key factor for consideration when planning all activity and all necessary and possible steps are taken in order to mitigate, as much as possible, this impact
Reviewing our performance and policy on an ongoing basis to take account of changes in the organisation, legislation, government targets and other internal or external factors

Our current focus is to:

Increase the efficiency of our energy and water use in our premises
Minimise the generation of waste and implement re-use or recycling initiatives wherever possible, ensuring that these procedures are understood and adhered to
Measure the carbon impact of our activities and implement ways of reducing this impact
Ensure that environmental consideration is given to procurement processes and work with suppliers and contractors to deliver more sustainable outcomes
Monitor and reduce the amount of travel of British Council staff by using alternative communication mechanisms to deliver our international work, eg. video-conferencing
Incorporate environmental consideration and monitoring into project management processes