It’s been a little over a year since Lees Associates joined PRIME, a collective of like-minded responsible businesses that share a commitment to making a valuable, positive and sustainable impact on the environment and on the communities they serve.
PRIME gives its members a score against each of its six principles:
1. Being Environmentally Better
Purchasing responsibly and reducing our waste.
2. Embracing Sustainable Innovation
Using technology and science to reduce our impact.
3. Spreading the Word
Promoting the collective success of PRIME members.
4. Delivering Impact
Actions speak louder than words – owning our actions.
5. Making a Difference
Using our organisation as a force for good.
6. Being Accountable
Saying what we're going to do, and then doing what we said we would.
We’re delighted that, as a result of changes we’ve implemented over the last year, our score increased by a point to 10 in February this year.
Sustainability: in our DNA
Our founder, John Lees, was passionate about sustainability, and as a result we have always been early adopters of new, more sustainable technologies – from installing one of the first reed beds to filter foul waste water and return it to a potable standard, to installing a biomass boiler that was fuelled entirely by the estate’s annual yield from coppicing.
Dixton Manor, where Lees Associates installed a biomass boiler fuelled by wood chippings produced within the estate.
Why PRIME?
We looked into various net-zero carbon schemes but many of these felt limited, with the main solution being to plant trees. We want to make a real impact, pushing boundaries and finding innovative solutions to the problems we face as a society.
PRIME allows us to be part of a like-minded community of businesses who can learn from each other and share in each other’s successes.
Changes we’ve made
At PRIME’s core is the need to hold ourselves accountable. Scoring ourselves against the six published PRIME principles compels us to look for innovative measures we can adopt to get better at what we do in any way. Hearing what other PRIME members have implemented and learning from their experiences is also really helpful and incentivises us to push ourselves further.
Over the last year, we’ve made the following changes:
In the studio
We have replaced all the lighting with energy-efficient fittings
We have installed more insulation and more efficient heating
We measure and track our energy and paper consumption and waste production so we can improve on this year-on-year
On projects
We ask clients at the outset what their sustainability ambitions are and try to steer them where we can
We have established an internal database of more sustainable products, material and systems that we can specify without any loss of performance or greater overall cost
Our BIM software, Archicad, has an embodied carbon plugin that shows us, as we develop our designs, what their life cycle embodied carbon will be
PRIME members at a recent round table event.
Out and about
PRIME includes a community-engagement element and we have become increasingly involved in community activities, including Positive Luxury’s recent panel discussion on sustainable sourcing.
What’s next
In order to maintain or improve their score, PRIME members have to do more than they were doing the year before. This means we are constantly looking for new steps to take or ways to expand on what we had started the year before.
We have now opened this up to our whole team, and recently held a workshop to brainstorm ideas for improving our score for next year. Measuring so much more now than we used to means we will be able to use the data to make more informed changes to how we operate across the board.
While we acknowledge that we have only just begun our journey towards a more sustainable long-term future, we are so excited about what else we can achieve in the coming years.
Want to learn more?
If you would like to find out more about PRIME or becoming a member, do please speak to us or visit https://weareprime.org.