ESG Overview

Plymouth has been a responsible corporate citizen since our founding, but starting this year we are embarking on a more rigorous ESG journey. We have begun and will continue to strengthen and expand a range of ESG initiatives and to report more extensively about our progress. Although these more formalized ESG efforts are just getting underway, we have already made important progress in a few key areas, and we share that throughout this ESG section of our website. We will be issuing our first full ESG report later this year, covering all our efforts throughout 2022. . 


2022 ESG Highlights

 

  • Developed Plymouth’s Climate Change Policy & Strategy, committing to Net Zero emissions from our own operations by 2025 and from our entire portfolio by 2040


  • Converted 15 million square feet – 44% of our portfolio – to LED lighting – reducing total electricity consumption across our entire portfolio about 8%


  • Installed 14.5 million square feet of “cool roofs” – 42% of our total portfolio


  • Installed 1.72 million square feet of silicone roof restorations.


  • Installed 2.4 megawatts of solar power – with contracts underway for an additional 6 megawatts of solar power


  • Continued our policy of granting meaningful numbers of shares of Plymouth stock to every employee


  • Achieved a perfect safety record: zero accidents or recordable injuries in 2022


  • Contributed significant financial support to local agencies in all 10 of our major markets to help them make progress in reducing homelessness


  • Established two new ESG governing bodies: Sustainability Committee of the Board of Directors and Management Committee for Environment and Sustainability 


  • Established the Cybersecurity Committee of the Board of Directors


  • Revised our Code of Ethics and Business Conduct to strengthen our commitment to anti-corruption practices, diversity and inclusion, labor rights, and human rights


Message From Jeff Witherell, Chairman and CEO 


All of us at Plymouth are proud to share with you our Environment – Social – Governance (ESG) efforts. We have historically always pursued responsible ESG practices pragmatically and informally – indeed “integrity” is one of our three founding pillars. But beginning this year, we are embarking on a more formal ESG journey. We are working to carefully understand the expectations of our key stakeholders, conduct benchmarking, and build solid, programmatic ESG initiatives. We have made significant progress already, which we are sharing in this report, and we are excited about advancing even further in the years ahead.


Our most material challenge and number one commitment on the environmental side is to reduce our energy consumption and decrease our use of non-renewable energy. To that end, we are tracking and reducing our own energy use, important in its own right. We are targeting to reduce our energy consumption every year, and to be fully carbon neutral by 2025.  But the lion’s share of our energy footprint comes from the energy our tenants consume – so we are also working hard on three fronts there: (1) developing a measurement system by the end of 2023 that will allow us to track all the Scope 3 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that derive from our tenants’ energy consumption, (2) making our entire portfolio more energy efficient beginning immediately, and (3) helping our tenants better understand how they can reduce their energy use through an education and communication program. Our goal is to have our entire portfolio achieve Net-Zero carbon emissions by 2040 – including all of our Scope 3 GHG emissions.


To begin our effort at reducing energy usage in our buildings, in 2022 we have been aggressively converting our older traditional lighting systems to highly efficient LED lighting, and offering inducements to encourage our tenants to upgrade their lighting systems. We now have 44% of our entire portfolio converted, reducing our tenants’ total energy consumption by an estimated 8%. We have also been actively pursuing installation of “cool roofs”, silicone roof renewals, and rooftop solar arrays throughout our portfolio, all of which are creating significant reductions in energy consumption and in the use of non-renewable energy. Nearly half of our properties now have these roofing innovations installed. And beginning this year, all our new landlord-controlled tenant improvement projects have criteria and requirements that incorporate green building considerations. 

“Our goal is to have our entire portfolio achieve Net-Zero carbon emissions by 2040 – including all of our Scope 3 GHG emissions.”


As importantly for us, our ESG efforts also include significant social initiatives, starting with fundamental commitments to our people. We have always maintained that real estate is about people – and therefore to be outstanding in operationally intensive real estate, we need to find and retain outstanding people. So we work very hard to do that. We start with our duty to adhere to labor rights laws, support excellent health and safety, and be an equal opportunity employer with respect for diversity; but for us we go far beyond that. We provide highly competitive compensation and a comprehensive benefits package, including a company-paid retirement savings plan that ranks among the top 10% of all U.S. companies. Going even further, all our employees are shareholders, not just stakeholders. We grant restricted stock units to every employee, supporting our efforts to align everyone’s interests to create consistent wins for them, for Plymouth, and for our investors. This culture of shared commitment is a key part of how we think about the “social” dimension of ESG.

“Every single one of our employees are granted stock – reflecting our long-standing commitment to employees as fundamental partners in our shared success.” 


Beyond our own people, as part of our work on the social dimension of ESG, we are also committed to the communities in which we operate. Specifically, we recognize that homelessness is an increasing problem — a crisis — throughout the US. It is a terrible burden for homeless people themselves, of course, and it also has negative radiating effects for local businesses and for the vibrancy of our cities. Therefore, this year, as we have for the past three years, in all 10 cities where we have a significant presence, we provided significant financial assistance to organizations that shelter people experiencing homelessness and aid them in transitioning to permanent housing. Our support is helping to build a strong web of social effectiveness that makes life richer for all of us. 


Finally, we are also improving our governance. Our most significant governance commitment is to operate with the highest levels of ethics and integrity. Indeed, integrity is one of our three founding pillars. We take seriously and truly live by our Code of Ethics and Business Conduct and are deeply committed to transparency and responsiveness to our shareholders. 


Structurally, beyond these ethical commitments, we have also put in place a strong range of good governance practices, which we detail later in this report. 


To specifically guide us on our ESG journey, this year we created two new committees at the Board and Management levels focused entirely on ESG. These two committees provide the operational planning and execution of our ESG strategies, and the oversight needed for those efforts. 


We are committed to this ESG journey for the long haul. We believe ESG issues represent both significant risk and real opportunities for us and we intend to help lead the real estate industry in meeting those challenges. We are happy to share with you in this report our efforts so far and look forward to hearing your feedback as we work hard to travel this path quickly and well.



Message From Caitlin Murphy, Chair of the Board Sustainability  Committee


As an independent director and Chair of the Sustainability Committee of the Board, I am committed to helping to lead Plymouth in our pursuit of a disciplined, effective ESG initiative.  While Plymouth has always operated with integrity and a sense of responsibility, we are all now convinced that we must become more systematic in our ESG efforts.  Greenhouse gas emissions are a vital concern for everyone, and we will lead the way in reducing our contribution to climate change.  Already we have significant climate change work underway, and our Board Sustainability Committee is leading the effort to increase the pace and scope of that work.  We are also committed to strengthening Governance at Plymouth, to increasing the diversity of both our Board and executive leadership, and to being more transparent in our reporting about ESG.  


The ESG work that we have begun is a true partnership between our people and our Board.  The Board is strongly committed to providing the leadership needed for Plymouth to make significant progress in ESG – because we are convinced that as we strengthen our ESG performance, that will lead to improvement in Plymouth’s overall financial performance as well.
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