PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) knows that looking after the environment adds up, so it takes account of carbon emissions caused by its employees' international travel as well as how much energy it uses and what waste it generates.

All of the organisation's 41 offices are covered under its ISO 14001 certified environmental management system, with one serving as a green pilot site where ecofriendly initiatives are trialled before being rolled out across the firm. This office has now had all desk side bins removed. PwC has a five-year energy strategy as well as annual national energy reduction plans which include a rolling programme of installing smart metering and light sensors in all its buildings, as well as awareness campaigns for its 15,122 staff on energy saving.

According to our survey, employees know their stuff when it comes to putting waste away for recycling (an 88% positive green score) but they do admit to using the air conditioning in the summer to keep offices cool, earning PwC a green score of just 24%. However, the company gets a top 15 green score of 71% for staff not travelling to work in their cars, and there are showers and changing rooms for those who choose to walk or cycle to work (85%, and ranked in the top 20).

Over the past two years PwC has invested more than £500,000 on videoconferencing equipment and facilities in a bid to reduce the need for staff to travel further than the office, in recognition that this is one of the organisation's main sources of carbon emissions.

Action is being taken for those who can't avoid travelling abroad to meetings. The 1,600 most frequent travellers are sent quarterly personal carbon target reports and, in addition, the company has set up a scheme with the World Land Trust, where for every ton of CO2 emissions its staff save by using teleconferencing, PwC makes a donation sufficient to protect one acre of rainforest in Ecuador. As a way of encouraging staff to choose greener modes of transport when travel is unavoidable, the in-house travel booking system provides carbon emission data to guide people to choosing a more ecofriendly alternative.

The company offsets all its other carbon emissions by funding green projects in India and the Philippines, which include generating renewable electricity and steam from local waste rice husks to meet the energy requirements of a textile mill, and capturing methane gas released from pig waste to convert it into biogas for use as electricity to power farms.

Back home, solar water heating panels provide up to 20% of the organisation's total energy needs.

Staff think such initiatives are a good investment (86%) and say they don't stop them getting on with their job (82%). Indeed, they think the company's environmental impacts are improving (77%) and that it is getting better at protecting the environment (82%).

Employees are also encouraged to take part in PwC's community programme (75%, another top 20 ranking on this point). Few people in the business still associate green issues with beards and sandals (79%) and teams think green (74%).