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At Legal & General, we have, over many years, seen our commitment to a broad range of stakeholders as an important part of operating a sustainable, successful business and 2008 was a year in which we succeeded in aligning our corporate social responsibility, philosophy and activities even more closely with our company objectives, both today and for the future. Importantly, we've increasingly been able to apply our business expertise and the very considerable goodwill of our employees to contribute towards the things that matter most to our customers, to the communities in which we are a major employer and to our staff.
We also increasingly see an opportunity to improve two-way communication and understanding between ourselves and organisations in the not-for-profit sector. This will help improve understanding of the latest thinking on issues important to our business and to society as a whole, such as longevity, climate change, and the development of a more effective savings culture.
The foundations of Legal & General's own environmental policy are based on the belief that reducing our emissions, rather than just offsetting, will enable us to make the greatest positive difference to the environment. For example, our employees reduced our direct CO2 emissions by driving one point two million miles fewer on business in 2008 compared with 2007. Good environmental management practice is to become still more important in 2009, as a result of our carbon-reduction commitments.
It is our view that events in financial markets during 2008 have underscored the importance of doing business in a sustainable responsible way and of taking a long term view. We believe that this approach is entirely compatible with, and indeed supportive of, the generation of value for our shareholders. We're not alone in this opinion. Shareholders, customers and employees increasingly evaluate companies using non-financial measures to compliment more traditional short-term performance metrics, and they are right to do so.