Wesfarmers Insurance will continue to support and promote sustainable business practices next year as part of the parent company’s commitment to sustainability.

The insurance arm says in the group’s latest sustainability report that it will continue to work with employee and business partners to achieve its sustainability goals.

This has included minimising the insurance businesses’ carbon footprint, which has been achieved by buying 26,000 verified emission reduction carbon credits from Carbon Conscious.

Wesfarmers Insurance’s greenhouse gas emissions were up 10% to 13,405 tonnes this year, compared to 12,236 tonnes last year.

This was despite reducing energy use by 10%. Total energy consumption per million dollars of revenue is estimated at 48 gigajoules.

The company also reduced water consumption from 119 megalitres per capita in 2008 to 66 megalitres this year.

In the past Wesfarmers Insurance based its estimates of water usage on actual data from its Bassendean office in suburban Perth, but this year it included all nine offices in Australia and NZ.

Other sustainable moves by Wesfarmers Insurance include recycling printer cartridges, using 100% recycled paper and switching the car fleet from Holden Commodores to smaller Cruze models which use 27% less fuel.

The company also achieved a better safety performance, with its staff reducing lost-time injury frequency rates from 2.22 in 2009 to 0.89 this year.