While business travel emissions are a significant contributor to global warming, it is critical for organisations to adopt sustainable travel options to prevent climate change.
Calculate the carbon footprint of your business travel
Calculating your business’ greenhouse gas emissions from business travel is a fantastic method to determine your carbon footprint and a good way to start the process of cutting down your business travel. From doing so, you will identify the major carbon dioxide emission sources which will help you develop a carbon reduction plan of action.
Reduce travel for meetings and conferences
Travel is an essential component of all business practice. You travel by driving or potentially flying a significant distance to meet clients, meet investors and all other aspects of business. That being said, travel not only has a detrimental influence on your company’s financial line, but it also has a bad impact on the environment. Telecommuting and video conferencing means you can meet and interact with people from the comfort of your office or even your own home through a screen and with technologies.
Though there are some measures you can take to minimise the environmental impact of business travel, switching to technology tools or a webinar platform can be more beneficial. Rather than attending a convention to network, plan a webinar and invite your clients to join you online, sparing everybody money and lowering carbon emissions. Try to speak with your clients via video chat, since it may provide the same benefits as a face to face meeting or conference.
Allow telecommuting
Telecommuting will not only help your company attract millennials on several levels, but it will also help you reduce business travel and thus help save the planet. You will reduce fuel emissions from cars and even cut commuting traffic by encouraging telecommuting.
Young professionals have declared a desire for versatile working arrangements like being able to work from home via telecommuting – these prospects will help you cut down on travel as they wouldn’t mind working from home.
Amending your policies to allow telecommuting also provides environmental advantages in the form of allowing you to minimise the amount of energy utilised in your office premises each day, saving money and lowering your company’s carbon footprint
Encourage environmentally friendly commuting
The effects of your workers’ travel to work on the carbon emissions created by your business will be significant, especially if they live quite far from the workplace and have a long commute. Encouraging your staff to participate in more environmentally friendly commuting is crucial for protecting the planet and is being recognised as a corporate duty these days.
Some actions your business can take to support greener commuting include car sharing, providing discounted or public transport, bike to work schemes and implementing a work from home policy.
Reduce your road travel emissions
Varying between industries, vehicle traffic emissions may appear to be an unavoidable element of the equation. Nonetheless, if you have a transportation network, there are several ways to improve its efficiency. Employing fuel-efficient automobiles with minimal emissions or electric vehicles are two examples.
