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GROUP ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY

Société Générale Group is fully aware of its responsibilities and constantly strives to protect the environment.

Group environmental policy

Objectives

  • Improve the integration of environmental criteria in all Group decision-making processes.
  • Coordinate environmental measures via the Group's flagship Carbon Neutrality Plan and prevent climate change.

Priority for 2011

  • Continue with the overhaul of the group's environmental policy.
The environment is a major priority for today's society. An economic system that is based on the gratuitous exploitation of natural resources and the limitless discharge of pollutants cannot be sustained. Like any community, Societe Generale also impacts the environment through its activities, and each member of its community of 155,617 people is responsible.
As well as within its different business lines, the Group is also determined to act on its internal activities and operations via an environmental policy that is based on three core priorities:
  • to reduce and minimise the direct impact of the Group's activities on the environment,
  • to optimise and streamline the use of natural and energy resources,
  • to constantly monitor customer and staff satisfaction.
Like any services company, Societe Generale also plays a part in the increase in greenhouse gas emissions as a result of its energy consumption, the business trips and travel to-and-from work of its staff and the waste it generates, particularly in terms of paper. In 2010, the Group (excluding Rosbank) consumed close to 859 GWh in electricity and heating, 1.5 million m3 of drinking water, 7,960 tons of paper and its employee travel totalled close to 463 million km.
All told, Societe Generale's CO2 emissions for 2010 are estimated at 277,745 tons (i.e. 1.99 tons of CO2 per person)1.
The Carbon Neutrality Plan approved by the Group's Executive Committee in 2007 is the core priority of the Group's environmental policy and part of its commitment in the fight against climate change.
The Group has also set in place a number of cross-business and cross-function programmes, including:
  • the integration of the environment in the Group's real estate management via the definition of governing principles that are to be systematically applied and aim to create a common framework for construction and renovation projects,
  • the increased implementation of new technologies that have a limited impact on the environment and that will enhance the environmental performance of the Group's different businesses and activities,
  • the stricter management of consumables, notably paper, by imposing high supplier standards and reducing paper consumption,
  • responsible "travel" through the management and increasing limitation of business trips, the search for and implementation of alternative solutions and heightened employee awareness.
1. See Appendix 1: Group Environmental Performance.