Since its launch last November, the charter has got off to a cracking start, says Cornes, with a wide cross-section of the retail property industry signing up, from big name investors, developers and retailers to centre managers, architects and designers.He is re-launching the charter this month at the House of Commons to explain to MPs and the government what it means, what it is achieving and what BCSC is looking to achieve.

But Cornes is a man who believes in putting his own company out in front in the sustainability stakes, not just persuading other people to join the cause. As head of sustainability at Prupim, the real estate investment management arm of the Pru, he has persuaded his own board to launch the Prupim Improver Portfolio.

It's a five-year experiment, he says, in applying a range of simple energy, water and waste reduction measures to its buildings to see what effect these will have on their environmental footprint. The Improver Portfolio is big - 26 properties in the UK worth some £500 million, including shopping centres, high streets and retail parks. Also, in 2005 Prupim became the first property company to be awarded ISO 14001, the international standard for an environmental management control framework.

"Last March, when we launched our Improver Portfolio, we carried out energy and environmental audits on all the buildings," says Cornes. "Now we will be applying a number of low-cost/no-cost measures to them to see what effects they will have on their environmental footprint. The Holy Grail for us is to have those environmental changes make an impact on investment returns." And that is the sustainability crunch, says Cornes. Brand image and looking green is very important to Prupim. People want to feel they can trust the 'man from the Pru', because it's going to look after their savings, their pension, their ISA, for 25 years.

"But we wouldn't do it solely for image and brand," he adds. "The key thing for us is making sure we add more to our policy-holders' funds at the end of the year."

Already at the Waterside Shopping Centre in Lincoln, part of the Improver Portfolio, a number of low-cost measures have resulted in a £12,000 per annum saving in electricity costs. The centre is also looking at using low-energy lighting to save around 30 tonnes of CO2 a year. "And we have one industrial warehouse shed where a lot of low-cost/no-cost measures were tried, and as a consequence the building let far earlier than envisaged and at £1 per square foot more than we thought it would."

== No plan b ==

Green for green's sake is not what sustainability is about, argues Cornes. "Look at what Marks & Spencer is doing with Plan A, its five-year, 100-point eco programme to work with its customers to combat climate change. As the publicity puts it, 'We are doing this because it's what you want us to do. It's also the right thing to do. We are calling it Plan A because it's the only way to do business. There is no Plan B.'

"Their whole business plan is Plan A. Sustainability is totally integrated into what Marks & Spencer is doing. They see it as a very commercial project. Although there is a cost up front, they will get far more back because they know customers will want to shop with them."

One way to differentiate your shopping centre is to demonstrate what you're doing to lessen your impact on the environment. Take measures to reduce energy and water usage. Recycle waste. And put something back into the community. "It's blindingly obvious," Cornes says, "that anything we can do to make towns and cities where we have shopping centre investments safer, cleaner and greener has to be good for business.

"I believe people want to shop at a shopping centre that is responsible. Sustainability is not a problem, it's a business opportunity, and we've grasped that with both hands."

When Prupim was awarded ISO 14001, Cornes told his shopping centre managers what it really meant. "It shows we're driving down the environmental impact of our shopping centres and saving both landlord and retailers money by reducing costs. But don't forget to use ISO 14001 as a marketing differentiator - your shopping centre is more environmentally friendly than your competitor's."

Sustainability and reducing your environmental impact don't have to mean big investments in hi-tech solutions, says Cornes. "Most things we're looking at in the Improver Portfolio are small, incremental changes, not rocket science."

Cornes has produced a list of 40 top tips including low-cost concepts such as using energy-saving bulbs, painting walls a lighter colour to reflect more light, installing local thermostat controls and fitting reduced-flow taps in bathrooms. No-cost ideas include turning off unwanted lights at night, turning down the thermostat a degree or two, and separating waste for recycling.

"We've now started sharing the results with colleagues across the whole Improver Portfolio. And there's nothing stopping property managers in any of our properties, even outside the portfolio, from applying these simple measures.

"At our warehouse at Griffin industrial estate in Totton, we went through a list of things we could do to improve the shed. Some were accepted, others were rejected on grounds of cost. We were not trying to make a huge impact on energy efficiency, so we weren't talking about solar panels on the roof. We looked at simple things like ceiling or roof windows to make it lighter, and basic insulation and lighting controls to make the building more energy efficient - mostly small improvements, but they made the building more attractive to a tenant.

We know from the work we've done on ISO 14001 that some paybacks can be quite dramatic. In the first year that we applied the standard to Cribbs Causeway in Bristol, we reduced water consumption by 14 per cent and electricity and gas by 14 per cent and 17 per cent respectively. The tenants are benefiting."

BCSC now has an enormous repository of knowledge and best practice for members to access. And the charter gives shopping centre owners and managers a consistent way of measuring their environmental impact and offers them an opportunity to benchmark their performance against that of their peers.

== spreading the word ==

Although most of the big players are on board the BCSC Charter, the problem now is getting the message across to the small and medium-sized companies - essentially the tenants, says Cornes. "We find it very, very difficult to engage with some tenants on sustainability, and not only retail tenants but office tenants as well.

"Like a lot of landlords we're pretty good at controlling the bits we control, the common parts of a building. We've whittled down their impact quite considerably and the savings are feeding back into the tenants' service charge."

A small customer relationship management team has been set up within Prupim to explore ways of creating formal engagement with tenants on sustainability issues, says Cornes.

"One of the things we're looking at," he explains, "is perhaps involving Marks & Spencer, who everybody knows, to try to get some clout behind what we're trying to do and to see if they can help us create a dialogue with occupiers."

As for the future, Cornes believes the pressure for sustainability will increase and rise to the top of every business agenda. It will be driven by the increasing weight of legislation and the ever-rising cost of energy and waste disposal.

Here Cornes sees a role for some rocket science, with new technologies coming to the aid of shopping centre developers to make buildings more sustainable when built and, more importantly, when existing buildings - 98 per cent of the UK's non-domestic building stock - are refurbished.

"Low carbon technologies are coming down in price. For instance, there have been big strides in the development of photovoltaic cell technology. At Prupim we're beginning to look at putting photovoltaic panels on the roofs of our buildings. The buildings will then not only become carbon neutral but can sell excess power back to the national grid and make a profit."

Prupim has also developed one of the biggest wind turbine installations at its GreenPark business park in Reading. Completed in November 2005, the wind turbine towers over Junction 11 of the M4 motorway, capable of supplying enough energy straight into the local grid to provide green power to 1,500 homes, according to Cornes.

"Sustainability doesn't mean it's going to cost you more. We need to encourage people to be more forward-thinking and perhaps take a little bit more risk. And at BCSC we want more people to sign up to the charter."

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