Tetra Tech Releases Our 2023 Sustainability Report Highlighting Progress Towards Our 2030 Goals
Sharing our achievements and progress toward meeting our environmental, social, and governance goals for 2030
Tetra Tech released our 2023 Sustainability Report, advancing our commitment to improving the lives of 1 billion people by 2030.
Tetra Tech’s 2023 Sustainability Report, in honor of Earth Day, shares our progress to improve the lives of 1 billion people by 2030, reporting a total of 545 million lives improved around the world to date.
For nearly 60 years, we have leveraged cutting-edge expertise and the latest technology to provide more sustainable solutions to clients and continually improve the way we do business. The environmental, social, and governance (ESG) principles we apply to our projects are reinforced through our commitment to the United Nations (UN) Global Compact and Science Based Targets Initiative.
Our commitment to sustainability is holistic, rooted in our internal culture, and extends throughout our projects around the world. Tetra Tech is developing industry-leading solutions for safe water supplies, net zero energy programs, biodiversity preservation and restoration, and community resilience across the globe.
Improving lives through our 1 Billion People Challenge
Tetra Tech’s greatest impact on the world is through the more than 100,000 projects our scientists, engineers, and technical specialists perform each year across more than 100 countries. We support our clients as they work to improve sustainability of water supplies, increase biodiversity, reduce carbon emissions, increase renewable energy generation, restore ecosystems, and implement responsible social and governance programs.
Last year Tetra Tech launched the first-of-its-kind measurement of the global impact of our projects and progress toward our 1 Billion People Challenge, which measures project impact and lives improved around the world. With the addition of 138 million people over the past year, we have advanced to 545 million people’s lives improved.
We align our project impact analysis with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and track the ESG benefits of the projects we perform across five key metrics, reporting the following additions:
- 502 billion gallons of water per year treated, saved, or reused
- 1,023 megawatts (MW) of renewable energy per year identified, planned, or generated
- 6.7 million hectares (ha) of land and water ecosystems per year protected, managed, or restored
- 80.6 million metric tons (MT) of CO2e avoided or captured
- 32.2 million lives benefited from social and governance programs
In our Sustainability Report, we highlight global projects from 2022 that contribute to our baseline metrics. They are representative of the tens of thousands of projects we perform for our clients that improve lives each day.
Mitigating climate impacts through sustainable business practices
Tetra Tech set a 2030 goal to reduce our greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from operations by 50 percent from our 2021 baseline. This goal reaffirms our commitment to a reduction in GHG emissions and aligns with the global 1.5-degree Celsius target of the Paris Agreement.
In 2022 our total GHG emissions from global operations was 48,188 MT CO2e, or 2.08 MT CO2e per employee. Our GHG emissions decreased by 25 percent per employee for Scope 1 and 2, which includes operationally related direct impacts and indirect impacts such as purchase of electricity and heat. We continued to expand upon the scope of data sets included in our Scope 3 emissions, including business travel (air, rental car, hotel, and fleet vehicle miles traveled), upstream purchases and deliveries, and waste generation.
We took several actions that had a beneficial impact on our GHG emissions in the 2022 reporting year and which will continue in future years. In 2022 we reduced our overall office footprint per employee by 26 percent, decreasing to 132 square feet per employee, already achieving our 2030 goal of less than 150 square feet per employee. We also continue to leverage technology solutions to provide high connectivity, flexibility, cybersecurity, and efficiencies for all our employees.
Promoting employee development and inclusion
Tetra Tech’s foundation is our people—our engineers, scientists, and technical specialists who create innovative solutions for our clients’ complex challenges. In 2022 we reaffirmed our commitment to nurture a thriving employee community by supporting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) across our operations. We are tracking our progress toward workforce gender balance, racial and ethnic diversity, employee engagement, and professional development goals. Our global Employee Resource Groups (ERG) Program, which fosters a safe, supportive environment where all voices are heard and all employees feel safe and can thrive, saw a 35 percent increase in employee participation during 2022.
A thriving community is a healthy community, and Tetra Tech recognizes the importance of our employees’ mental and physical health in the office, in the field, and in their personal lives. In 2022 we saw a 39 percent increase in employee engagement in corporate wellness initiatives. Our wellness initiatives include quarterly Wellness Webinars, a Wellness Week as part of our holistic Safety Month campaign, and our annual 30-day Healthy Life Challenge and year-round Healthy Life Community. These programs encourage employees and their families to live healthy, balanced lives at work and at home.
Our offices around the world demonstrated their commitment to social and environmental sustainability by donating resources and volunteering their time to better the environment and enrich their local communities. Across our global operations, we support financial and in-kind giving, volunteering, and various community-based initiatives with a focus on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) programs. In 2022 Tetra Tech employees donated more than $492,000 to community programs around the world.
Advancing towards our sustainability goals
Sustainability at Tetra Tech is integrated across our global business, throughout our operations, projects, and community activities. We are working to reduce our GHG emissions, support global efforts to achieve the Paris Agreement’s 1.5-degree Celsius target, and improve the lives of 1 billion people.
On behalf of our 27,000 employees at Tetra Tech, we reiterate our commitment to using our Leading with Science® approach to produce scalable solutions that will reduce the effects of climate change and contribute to a better world.
