Earth Day events involve employees from across the world, and focus on raising environmental awareness.

Customers and employees
In the 2007 report we talked about the work we were doing to improve our customer care, in the wake of the DAYTRANA voluntary withdrawal in September 2007. The result is a series of four separate but connected programs, each designed to improve a specific aspect of the way we manage our relationships with customers, from sales and marketing to our relationships with healthcare providers. Some of these are already underway, while others will get going later in 2009.

We continue to invest in our own people, and support their personal and professional development. Work/life balance remains an important issue for us, and we want to encourage a positive and healthy balance between home and work. In some cases this can include the flexibility to work from home, and our HR teams are supporting our managers so that this can be an option for more Shire employees where appropriate.

Shire and the environment
Shire has always been an environmentally responsible Company, and in the last two years we've drawn together all our efforts in this area into one umbrella initiative, Shire's Actions and Values for the Environment, or 'SAVE'. This covers everything from environmental performance at our operations, to the help and support we offer our own people to help them play their part in tackling climate change. This includes a dedicated site on the Shire intranet which offers a personal carbon footprint calculator, and practical advice throughout the year. 'SAVE for the holidays', for example, suggested ten tips for a greener Christmas, including suppliers of environmentally-friendly gifts. UK employees also received a packet of seeds to encourage them to grow their own Christmas tree for the future.

SAVE is run by teams of employees across the business, and is focused on the five most important areas for a business like Shire: product development, transport, buildings, recycling and procurement. Achievements in 2008 included reductions in the amount of packaging we use, the increasing use of hybrid cars in our sales fleet, new car-pooling schemes, a range of energy-saving modifications to our buildings, higherlevels of recycling, and the work we're doing to help our suppliers reduce their carbon footprint. We aim to reduce our own carbon footprint by 10% by the end of 2009.

One of the centerpieces of the SAVE program is Earth Day. Although it originated in the US, Earth Day is now a worldwide event involving 17,000 organizations in 174 countries. Shire's Earth Day events involve employees from across the world, and focus on raising environmental awareness and encouraging people to take part, whether that's by participating in conservation schemes or making changes to their own lifestyles to help combat climate change. Every employee was given an Earth Day environmentally-friendly re-usable shopping bag, and the day ended with the planting of trees at our Basingstoke, Philadelphia, and Massachusetts offices.

Shire in the community
Shire took part in hundreds of different community activities in 2008, ranging from individual employee fundraising and volunteering, to bigger projects like World Kidney Day.

One of our community priorities is to support science education, which is why we've established a five-year partnership with the Royal Society of Chemistry in the UK. We're investing £50,000 a year in a scheme to encourage some of the UK's brightest young people to consider a career in science. Our support is funding an essay prize which is open to the best A-level chemistry students in the UK. The first set of winners flew to Boston in December 2008 during which they toured the HGT plant, and visited Harvard and MIT.

We're supporting education in a completely different way through our work on 'Project Playground'. We're working on this with Ty Pennington, the US TV personality; he suffers from ADHD and is committed to raising awareness of the effect the condition can have on both children and adults. This particular project focuses on an elementary school in Harlem, New York. There are 600 children at the school, but they had nowhere to play. We worked with Ty to design and build a stunning new playground, including a running track, a jungle gym, a baseball area, and a basketball court.

In 2008 Shire donated £15,000 to the M-PACT program being run by the UK charity Action on Addiction. The name stands for 'Moving Parents and Children Together', and it aims to bring together families who've been affected by substance abuse, so they can help and support one another. M-PACT is a pilot project at present, but the aim is to roll it out to parents and children across the UK. Shire's support will help Action on Addiction to evaluate the program and train more professionals to deliver the program in their own areas.

Throughout the year staff from the HGT office in Massachusetts took part in sponsored walks and runs for the US National MPS Society. MPS stands for Mucopolysaccharidoses, which is the group of genetic diseases which includes Hunter syndrome. There were five walks throughout the year, and those who took part were also able to meet many patients and their families.

Full information about all our CR activities, including data, targets and objectives, can be found on our dedicated CR website: www.shirecr.com