As well as improving our customers' utilisation of natural and commercial resources, we also have extensive programmes to minimise any detrimental impact from our own operations on the environment or public health. For the last two years we have benchmarked our performance using the annual Business in the Environment (BiE) Index of Corporate Environmental Engagement. Following our improved ranking after the first year, we have now risen a further 31 places in the 2001 index, to 33rd out of 192. In the general industrial sector we improved to second of the eleven participating companies, with our performance endorsed by BiE as indicative of our commitment to continual improvement.

During the year, we extended our internal environmental performance measurement by 40% to 207 locations. Targeting sites with both large energy consumption and waste generation, we undertook 37 waste minimisation audits to generate over 200 action items with potential savings of £1.9 million and paybacks mainly of less than one year. This year we plan to follow up on actions identified and extend the audits to another 20 facilities.

We continued our record of satisfactory regulatory compliance with no environmental incidents, notices or violations reported.

Our ISO 14001 certified sites have increased from five in 1999/2000 to 16 in 2001/02. Our Mexicali site became our second Mexican site to achieve Industria Limpia (Clean Industry) certification, the highest standard awarded by the Mexican Government. In May 2002, we signed a declaration of intent with the Mexican Federal Enforcement Agency for the Environment (PROFEPA) to achieve this standard at all our Mexican facilities within the next three years.

By the end of the current year, we anticipate that verifiable environmental management systems will either be in place or underway at all manufacturing/assembly facilities with more than 100 employees.

We are confident that we will meet our commitment to make a significant contribution to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions under the 1997 Kyoto agreement. Our original target — a 10% reduction by 2003/04 in energy and water consumption, hazardous waste generation and volatile organic compound emissions — is being reviewed following the disposal of many manufacturing facilities under our new strategy to ensure that our targets remain appropriate.