White Pages® News

Carbon neutral announcement

February 2, 2010

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Our iconic Yellow Pages® and White Pages® print and online directories have been certified carbon neutral through the Australian Government’s Greenhouse Friendly™ program.

We will achieve this by offsetting the carbon emissions of our directories through Greenhouse Friendly™ accredited providers and projects in Australia.

The certification is part of our Commitment to Climate Change announcement and follows an independent life cycle assessment undertaken by environmental professional services company, URS Australia. The assessment enabled us to identify which aspects of our directory business have the greatest environmental impacts and establish how to reduce impacts for the long term.

Sensis CEO, Mr Bruce Akhurst said, “The Yellow Pages® and White Pages® have been part of Australian communities for more than 130 years and play an integral role in our country’s economic and social well being.

“With this announcement, the millions of Australians who use our directories each week can be assured we are committed to playing our part in combating climate change and working to reduce our carbon emissions.”

“We will offset emissions generated throughout the complete lifecycle of the Yellow Pages® and White Pages® print and online directories, including the production, use, disposal and distribution of the directories, from 1 February 2010.

“We are also pleased to announce our target to reduce the company’s operational greenhouse gas footprint by five per cent year on year,” he said.

Our directories (supply chain included) are the largest part of our carbon footprint, each year accounting for approximately 175,000 tonnes of emissions, while Sensis operational emissions (fleet, electricity and air travel) account for about 30,000 tonnes of emissions.  

We have already started implementing a number of initiatives to reduce our operational greenhouse gas footprint, such as: enabling video conferencing at 21 office locations; the introduction of four cylinder diesel cars into the Sensis fleet from March 2010; and the scoping of new IT Purchasing Guidelines incorporating energy efficiency.

We will measure and monitor these impacts annually through a detailed Emissions Monitoring Plan, report annually on our carbon footprint and detail the improvements we’ve been able to make.

For more information, go to: http://about.sensis.com.au/sustainability/environment/ or email the Sustainability team at Sensis.