News
HRH launches Accounting for Sustainability at St James's Palace, London
6th December 2006
The Prince of Wales today launched a new project to encourage sustainable practice and reporting in business and other organisations.
His Royal Highness launched the Accounting for Sustainability project in front of an audience of 200 business leaders, representatives from the voluntary sector, faith leaders and politicians.
The Prince wants organisations to better assess the damage they cause to the planet and to take such factors into account in their decision-making process. It also aims to encourage clearer and more consistent reporting of such information.
His Royal Highness’ food company Duchy Originals is leading the way and is beginning to quantify how much greenhouse gas is emitted during the production of its goods.
The Prime Minister Tony Blair, Lord Browne, Chairman of BP, and The Rt Rev Dr Richard Chartres, The Bishop of London, gave keynote speeches.
The Accounting for Sustainability project seeks to help organisations measure more effectively the wider environmental and social costs of their actions. It was launched with a short film starring Stephen Fry as Planet Earth and Al Murray as the Moon. Click here to watch the video on the Accounting for Sustainability website.
In a speech at the launch of the project The Prince told the audience that the nation was running up the "biggest global credit card debt in history". He added: "We are consuming the resources of our planet at such a rate that we are, in effect, living off credit and living on borrowed time.
"In other words, we are financing what we in the developed world have today by accumulating a vast environmental and natural resource debt.
"So it is, of course, our children and grandchildren who will have to pay off this debt and we owe it to them - and to ourselves - to do something about it before it is too late."
The project was launched with a new short film, Costing the Earth, starring Stephen Fry as Planet Earth and Al Murray as the Moon. The video can be viewed on the newly launched Accounting for Sustainability website.
The website, www.accountingforsustainability.org.uk, will be developed in tandem with the project to provide aggregated and summarised information about climate change developments in conjunction with Business and the Community. Click here to visit the website and here to watch the video.
As part of the launch, The Prince of Wales committed himself to do more himself to measure and report on the environmental impact of his Household and Office in terms of carbon emissions.
This follows the Environmental Review, carried out with Forum for the Future, that the Prince commissioned to determine the carbon footprint of his Household.
In Their Royal Highnesses Annual Review 2007, The Prince of Wales will publish details of his carbon footprint and set a target to substantially reduce the carbon emissions of his Office and Household.
Alongside this the Household will continue to offset its carbon emissions through an independent agency. This makes the Office and Household carbon neutral.
Click here to visit the Environment and Social Responsibility page on this website to see what The Prince of Wales and The Duchess of Cornwall's Household is already doing.
Click here to read the speech by The Prince of Wales at the launch of Accounting for Sustainability.