Sustainability
Sustainability at Jacobs means ensuring long-term business resilience and success while positively contributing toward the economy, society and the environment.
View the Jacobs Climate Action Plan
Jacobs Sustainability Strategy
2018-2020 (PDF, 1.2 MB)
Jacobs Sustainability Consulting Services
Capability Statement
(PDF, 7.8 MB)
Jacobs Sustainability Reports
From the way we operate our business, to the work we perform with clients and other organizations, we continue to look at ways we can make a positive environmental, societal and economic difference for businesses, governments and communities around the world.
A sustainable future
Aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs), PlanBeyond? is our approach to sustainability — planning beyond today for a more sustainable future for everyone. We advance innovations that improve energy ef?ciency, resilience, conservation, reuse and reclamation of vital air, land and water resources.
We’re focused on reducing our greenhouse gas emissions and helping our customers integrate low-carbon solutions into their capital projects and operations. Our outstanding environmental performance during FY19 saw no significant environmental incidents in our operations.
Commitment to sustainability
Our Global Sustainability Commitment Statement sets out our intent to integrate sustainability throughout our business by making it part of our culture. Our commitments are to:
- Positively contribute to our global PlanBeyond goals that were developed in consultation with the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
- Foster a culture of sustainability that promotes economic prosperity, environmental benefit and social value.
- Continue a dialogue with all our stakeholders to raise awareness of sustainability and provide feedback on how we can do better.
- Research and develop innovative methods and applications for enhanced sustainability performance.
- Enable knowledge sharing and capacity-building around sustainability across our enterprise and all our projects.
- Be accountable for delivering our strategy through the sustainability governance structure that reports up to our Board.
400K
disposable plastic gloves eliminated from the waste stream across multiple
client sites (FY19)
7K+
pounds of heat-resistant tile beneficially-recycled at Kennedy Space Center
PlanBeyond is our approach to sustainability. It’s about planning beyond today for a sustainable future for everyone. For us, this means social and economic progress while protecting our environment and improving resilience. It is also about being the employer of choice for our people and being the go-to solutions provider for a more connected, sustainable world.
Pledge to action
With the UN climate change conference COP26 postponed to November 2021, we’ve launched a campaign to demonstrate what we can collectively achieve in a year when we unite in the fight against climate change.
We invite our partners from all over the globe to pledge measurable actions to urgently address climate change. Working together, we would like to fulfill these pledges. Collectively, we can quantify the impact these actions have over the year to demonstrate what can be achieved and the impact we can have when we unite. Irrespective of long-term plans to tackle the climate crisis, lots of companies each taking one small action, that can be fulfilled by COP26, can make a big difference.
Throughout the campaign we will be updating this page with the latest news on pledges and progress – check back to stay informed!
Sustainability priorities matrix
The sustainability priorities matrix below presents the findings of our materiality assessment. The assessment comprised stakeholder engagement, industry benchmark and other research and the findings have informed our strategic sustainability priorities and focus areas.
Sustainable solutions for clients
Together, we craft solutions that affect the way people live. From accelerating the next generation of innovators to the world’s first ultra-low emission zone, from helping communities recover to monitoring water quality to protect public health, we solve for better, never losing sight of our responsibility to each other.
- Alongside Shell Pipeline Company, we turned more than 96,000 plastic bottles into a natural infrastructure solution helping protect Louisiana’s shrinking coastline and serving as a model for balancing coastal infrastructure integrity and an evolving natural environment.
- Transforming space waste into building blocks for future exploration and sustainability, our innovative solution for beneficial reuse of heat-resistant materials also eliminated $50,000 in disposal costs at Kennedy Space Center.
- Employing digital twin technology and simulations, we helped one confidential private sector client reduce energy consumption by 33% using control logic operational improvements.
- Through our safe management of one of the world's-largest remediation programs, the Central Plateau at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Hanford Site, we’ve cleaned up more than 19.3 billion gallons of groundwater to date – supporting the overall mission of protecting the precious Columbia River resource.
- Using?next-generation of bioremediation solutions, such as subgrade biogeochemical reactor (SBGR) technology, we’ve reduced annual carbon dioxide production at Travis Air Force Base by 930 tons – or the equivalent of emissions from ~200 cars per year.
- In partnership with VCS Denmark, we helped them break the mold for how utilities approach energy optimization – creating a water resource recovery facility that generates more than 150% of its own energy.
- By implementing the largest in-vessel based operation in Canada, we helped the City of Calgary reduce the amount of organic waste sent to the city landfill from single family homes by 46% in just one year of operation.
Partnering with our communities through the Collectively? program
Thriving communities. Giving back. A brighter future. What we do is more than a job, we work every day to make the world better for all. Every day, Jacobs employees around the world make a positive difference for our clients and the communities in which we live and work.
Through our approach to global giving and volunteering — the Collectively? program — we unite our 55,000 visionaries, dreamers and doers in a single platform for charitable giving and volunteering — allowing us to amplify the positive impact we make in our communities every day.
- In the face of adversity, our people come together with passion, creativity and dedication. This is part of what makes our company – and our people — so special. It is also one of our greatest strengths. Our Collectively? program helps us leverage this power to support more than 2 million charities around the globe through our partnership with Benevity, the world’s number one company for online workplace giving and volunteering.
- We maximize our collective positive impact by measuring and tracking our employee impact, as well as our corporate citizenship and philanthropic activities.
- We are committed to giving back, engaging with communities and building enduring partnerships. Jacobs launched a $250,000 employee matching campaign for COVID-19 related causes and a $100,000 employee matching campaign for causes working for equality and inclusion.
- Jacobs’ company giving approach is aligned with these strategic causes: STEAM, inclusion and diversity; health and well-being; and sustainable development.
- The Collectively? Ambassador Network is a group of dedicated employees who are passionate about making a difference in their local communities. To date, we have a total of 125 Ambassadors across 16 countries and 85 offices. Together, they harness the power of the Collectively? program across our global offices, remote workforce and project sites.
Annual sustainability disclosures and reporting
Jacobs discloses sustainability information and data annually to CDP (formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project) and the Dow Jones Corporate Sustainability Assessment. We also incorporate sustainability progress and information in the Jacobs Annual Report.
Human Rights
We respect the human rights and dignity of people in our operations, supply chain and the communities where we work. Our approach is guided by international principles including the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. Review our Human Rights Policy and Modern Slavery Act Statement to learn more.