Green Travel Tips
Business travel significantly impacts a company’s overall carbon footprint because it encompasses the indirect greenhouse gas emissions generated by employee travel through modes like air travel, trains, rental cars, and taxis, which are considered outside of a company's direct operational control but still contribute to its overall carbon footprint.
At WestPoint Home, we encourage our employees to embrace Green Travel Best Management Practices to reduce Scope 3 emissions from necessary business travel. Here are some tips from our company BMPs that individuals and other companies can consider adopting as well.
1. Optimize travel planning. Encourage virtual meetings when possible, prioritize shorter trips, and choose routes with fewer connections.
2. Select sustainable transportation options. Opt for train travel over air travel where feasible, and consider carbon offset programs for flights.
3. Fly in economy class to lower CO2 emissions. Did you know that first-class and business-class seats can generate up to four times the amount of carbon emissions? This is due to the larger area occupied by these seats, as well as the extra weight of the luggage allowance, and more. An easy and cost-effective way to reduce these carbon emissions is to encourage employees to fly economy class. Considering most business trips are domestic or short to medium-distance, this swap shouldn't have a major impact on the overall experience of the business trip.
4. Choose low-emission airlines. Not all airlines generate the same amount of carbon emissions, even when flying the same route. Even though flying generates significant CO2 emissions, it’s not realistic to exclude it entirely from your sustainable business travel policy. Instead of banning air travel completely, identify which airlines serve the routes your employees usually fly and create a list of the most carbon-friendly ones.
Some criteria you can use to identify which airlines are more carbon-friendly are:
· Amount of CO2 generated by a specific flight and airline. You have access to this information when you use TravelPerk’s business travel booking platform.
· If the airline offers the possibility to offset your carbon footprint.
· If the airline has a sustainability policy, which you can usually find on their website, or ask about by email.
5. Avoid layovers. Another thing to keep in mind when flying for business is that one flight is always better than two! Layovers can add a major amount of carbon emissions to your trip, considering not only the amount of fuel used for takeoff and landing but also that needed to support ground operations and all services related to your short stay in an extra airport. If avoiding layovers is not an option, you can be more eco-friendly by keeping layovers as short as possible, avoiding hotel stays, and staying inside the airport itself.
6. Choose sustainable accommodations. Although the main source of carbon emissions during a business trip is air or road travel, accommodation follows right after, with an average of 10 to 13 tonnes of CO2e generated per room per year in the UK1. Hotels usually consume high amounts of energy and produce unnecessary waste as part of their operations. However, there are certifications in place for hotels that adhere to environmentally friendly practices. Apart from these certifications, many hotels have green travel initiatives in place too. Look for hotels across the globe that participate in the GREEN KEY program which identified hotels which have made a commitment to reducing their carbon footprint. Ensure you make choosing an environmentally friendly accommodation a part of your green travel policy.
7. Consider the greenest form of transport. Statistics show that flying generates more CO2e emissions than traveling by train. but can be greener than driving. The latter depends on the route, the type of car, and the amount of people traveling. If more than one person is traveling, then the amount of emissions released by the car is reduced, and driving is a greener option than flying. Using public transport when moving around cities, or between cities, should always be a priority over flying or driving. In many cases, public transport can even offer a smoother travel experience—think of all the time saved by avoiding traffic jams, not having to look for parking, or waiting to board.
8. Reduce your fuel consumption or go electric. To make car travel less polluting, make use of renewable energy, whether you decide to replace your company cars with electric models or just rent them. If that’s not possible, you can also consider choosing vehicles with smaller engines, which less fuel. Additionally, you can organize company-wide training sessions on fuel-efficient driving techniques to further reduce your company’s carbon footprint.
9. Reduce food waste while travelling. Order only what you can eat. Take leftovers back to the hotel. Eat leftovers. Utilize very little plastic in the process. All of these steps reduce waste and carbon emissions.
10. Walk. If you can stay close to where your business conference is, consider walking to the event. Not only is this good exercise, but it prevents any unnecessary emissions from the transportation.
11. Travel light. Any reduction in luggage weight helps reduce fuel usage by any means of transport and reduces carbon emissions.
12. Notes for conference organizers. If you organize or host a business conference, consider well in advance what to do with leftover food or food waste, insist on group or public transportation travel arrangements, insist on near zero waste events, limit any paper waste, always provide a remote attendance option, etc.
13. Make use of green travel tax breaks. When implementing a green travel policy, the benefits don’t resume to cost-savings and improved brand reputation—you can benefit from green tax breaks as well. Depending on the country where your organization is based, it may be eligible to receive tax breaks for implementing sustainable initiatives such as buying electric and low-emission vehicles, providing employees with public transport subscriptions, green commute incentives, and donations.
14. Offset your carbon footprint with GreenPerk. Although even the most sustainable travel options generate CO2e emissions, carbon-neutral business travel is still possible. How? By choosing carbon offsetting! This means encouraging a reduction of carbon emissions in order to compensate for emissions generated by your company, often in the form of donations. When there’s no other option, it’s still possible to offset 100% of your emissions related to business travel by using TravelPerk’s travel booking platform and GreenPerk. The cost is usually around 0.5% of the trip cost to offset 100% of each trip’s emissions.
1. Some content derived from www.travelperk.com