……Law firms in Australia now have the opportunity to monitor their environmental impact by measuring and reporting their carbon emissions online……..

14th May 2012 – The Australian Legal Sector Alliance (AusLSA), an industry-led association working to promote sustainable practices across the legal sector, has partnered with Greenstone Carbon Management to provide a free online portal for their members to measure and report their environmental impact. The solution will provide an intuitive online process for AusLSA members to input their business consumption data including electricity, paper, waste and business travel, and calculate the associated environmental footprint.

This partnership follows the success of a similar venture in England & Wales, with the Legal Sector Alliance (LSA). Since Greenstone’s partnership with the LSA was announced in September last year, 70 law firms and legal practices across England & Wales are now using the online portal to measure their environmental impact. This reporting tool has improved transparency, consistency and comparability of carbon emissions in the legal sector; making it easier for firms to track, monitor and benchmark their carbon emissions performance.
The tool, powered by Greenstone’s enterprise grade solution, Acco2unt, enables firms to process environmental data more quickly and with greater accuracy as part of their annual reporting process. The easy-to-use solution enables users to input their business consumption data, including paper consumption and recycling information, into the tool through step-by-step data entry wizards. It is then processed automatically by Acco2unt, with the associated footprint calculated and displayed on a summary page. The combined data from firms can then be used by AusLSA in their annual reporting publication.

Emily Wilson, General Manager of AusLSA comments: ‘Judging from the success of this project in England & Wales, I’m delighted to be able to make Greenstone’s portal available to our members; giving them a user friendly tool to upload their business data and review their environmental performance year on year. From AusLSA’s point of view, it will make our annual reporting process much more efficient and enable us to focus more time on advising firms how to reduce their environmental impact.

Matthew de Villiers, CEO of Greenstone comments: ‘We are pleased to be providing AusLSA members with our online carbon management portal. This project is a logical extension of our work in the UK and it is becoming increasingly clear that industry organisations like AusLSA need to have efficient central processes, tools and administration to measure, report and benchmark environmental performance and these requirements are ideal for our portal solution.”