About our Reporting

Our impacts

Pearson's main environmental impacts can be classified as either "direct" or "indirect". Direct environmental impacts are those for which we are directly responsible and have complete control. For us, these are:

• Offices, call centres and distribution centres:
  • Energy Use
  • Water Use
  • Presence of ozone depleting substances
  • Being a good neighbour
• Packaging and Waste
  • Unsold Product
  • Office Paper
  • Electronic and Electrical Equipment
  • Printer toners
  • Packaging
• Business Travel by air, by rail or by road

Our most significant direct environmental impact is emissions to air relating to mainly our properties but also business travel.

Indirect environmental impacts are those which can ultimately be attributed to our activities but over which we have no or limited control. Typically, these relate to the supply chain and this is the area where we have focussed most attention. We recognise that it is these indirect environmental impacts that are our most significant to our business and we have developed a programme to use our influence in a positive way. This year, we have looked at the impact of travel books.

What we include

We report on:

• The direct environmental impacts of running our operations
• Our aims, objectives and targets for reducing or eliminating these impacts
• Our approach towards improving our supply chain responsibilities

We report on 100% of our businesses including affiliates where we have a majority shareholding. Pearson at a glance provides more information on our market-leading businesses in education, business information and consumer publishing.

What we do not include is the environmental impacts of our suppliers such as paper manufacturers or suppliers.

Our products educate, entertain and inform. Our newspapers stimulate debate and help shape opinion. One of our guiding principles is to protect the editorial independence of authors and editors. As such, decisions on how environmental issues are covered in our books, magazines and newspapers are not included in the scope of this review.

However, one example of how these issues are reported comes from research by Futerra, a specialist sustainable development communications agency. They found that the Financial Times provided the most balanced reporting on climate change issues. The findings were based on a review of 320 UK national newspaper climate change articles between August and November 2005, including 63 from the FT.

The review covers our activities for the 2005 calendar year.

Baseline Data

Each year, changes to our business operations affect our property portfolio. We are conscious that these changes can distort the reporting of our underlying environmental performance. This is why we provide both a like-for-like comparison of buildings from our baseline year of 2003 through to 2005 in addition to our absolute performance figures. Adjustments are made for buildings no longer used by Pearson.

An example of this distortion would be the opening of our new Distribution Centre in the UK during 2004 which was a significant factor behind the increase in our absolute energy use this year. As the building was opened in 2004, it is not included in our baseline figures. In addition, Recoletos left the group in early 2005 and data relating to their buildings have been excluded from both the 2005 figures reported and like-for-like comparisons. Adjustments are made for buildings no longer used by Pearson and those new to the company. These adjustments mean that the baseline and absolute figures for 2003 will not be identical to previous years reporting.

We use the like-for-like baseline for many of our environmental improvement targets as property churn can mean that relying on absolute figures can be misleading.

Scope of Audit Review

Our 2005 review builds on the previous five years of environmental reporting at Pearson. Each year, we have increased the scale and scope of the reporting process and last year achieved coverage in excess of 90%. This was achieved through a detailed reporting survey that was completed by all Pearson sites over 10,000 square feet in size or house more than 50 employees.

Our survey was first introduced in 2001 following an extensive consultation process to identify our main environmental impacts. The survey is reviewed each year by the members of our two standing environmental networks in the UK and the US.

The 2005 environmental survey covers 17 countries and 104 buildings including 12 new buildings:

The 17 countries included in this survey are:

Australia
Brazil
Canada
China
France
Germany
India
Japan
Malaysia
New Zealand
Poland
Singapore
Spain
Taiwan
Thailand
UK
USA

Employee numbers are collected on an average headcount basis rather than full-time equivalence (FTE) as this better reflects usage of the buildings. Headcount numbers are typically higher than FTE.

Buildings that house 50 or less employees

This year, we have introduced a new system to estimate the environmental impact of our buildings in the US which are either below 10,000 square feet in size or house 50 or less of our employees. This has allowed us to increase our reporting to over 95% of the operations under our control by number of employees.