Campus

Brad Sparks

I'm Brad Sparks, I'm a director with KPMG International responsible for our Global Green Initiative, and I'm based out of our Los Angeles office.

In April of 2008, KPMG became the first of the Big 4 accounting firms to announce a global and environmental climate change program called the Global Green Initiative.

That initiative is centered around three commitments. First, is to reduce, measure and report our greenhouse gas emissions with an ambition of reducing our emissions by 25% by 2010, using a 2007 baseline.

In addition, we're also working with environmental NGO's on environmental projects, and then also working to raise awareness around climate change with both our employees, our suppliers, as well as our clients.

I've been working with KPMG member firms around the world on measuring their impacts and working to implement reduction programs to reduce our environmental impacts.

Going green for KPMG is important for several reasons. First, it's something that's expected of us by our employees, by our clients, and by our communities.

As a committed corporate citizen, we are committed to addressing our environmental impacts as well as our community impacts. In addition, we've also recognized that there are unique opportunities by implementing climate change and environmental programs.

We've been able to provide services in this area to our clients as an emerging growth area for our Advisory professionals around the world. In addition, we also realize that there can be significant cost savings from implementing environmental programs.

For example, through some of our sustainable IT initiatives, we've realized and recognized over a million dollars in tax incentives and savings by implementing sustainable IT practices.

There are very simple things that we can do. One example is by really understanding and monitoring our own personal energy consumption. One of the biggest sources of energy waste through our home energy consumption, is actually what is called Phantom Energy Usage. Which accounts for about 40% of our electronics energy consumption.

What Phantom Energy is, is essentially all of the appliances that we have that are in standby mode and are not actually even being utilized. So by unplugging and not using, energy ah and electronics through these items, we can actually reduce those energy consumptions, save money, and reduce our emissions.

There are also several other things we can do for example, reducing our beef consumption. Meat production accounts for about 17% of global greenhouse emissions. So by just having a meatless Monday, for example, is a great way to reduce your environmental impact without really changing anything.

We have several resources available with more information available about our environmental initiatives. For example, the KPMG Careers Web site offers a host of information overall on our global green initiative, as well as showing some of the external recognition we've received.

For example, we've received placement in Net Impact's Green Challenge, as well as being named by Computer World as a top green IT organization.

In addition, for interns and employees, we have a number of sites available through our internet that both display information around our environmental initiatives, as well as provide tips and feedback about how each one of us can make a difference.