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Christiansen and Fürer discussed the importance of environmental commitment in the business travel sector and how companies are ‘putting their money where their mouth is’ in the current crisis. In her CNBC program “Global Players”, which was broadcast throughout the world in December 2008, the TV journalist asked the head of AirPlus Germany to explain why many companies ‘think’ green – but can’t ‘act’ green with all consequence yet.

Join the discussion! Why is the business travel sector still hesitating when it comes to environmental commitment? Are your business trips already ‘green’?

This way I’d like to call on every business traveler, travel-manager and travel agency to support carbon offsetting programs and to think twice, if every business trip is needed.

Some 32% of all travel planners consider it to be reasonable to use carbon-offset programs, which offset CO2 emissions through compensation payments. Another 39% want to wait for corresponding offers when costs for environmental impact between airlines and travelers are split. This is the result of a current survey of AirPlus Community members that was completed yesterday.

The results show that only 29% of those who responded do not consider carbon offsetting to be necessary or do not feel that it is part of their area of responsibility.
For additional information on carbon offsetting programs, please see
How to travel “environmentally friendly”?

Further current surveys can be found in the “Poll” section in the right-hand column.

It’s not always “the others”. All means of transportation and those who use them contribute approximately 20% to the greenhouse gas emissions that are changing the world’s climate. While CO2 emissions have receded in all other areas of the western world, traffic-related emissions continue to climb significantly throughout the world. Business travel plays a significant role in this. “It makes up 17% of the overall amount of traffic,” explains Ludger Bals, an expert from the Verband Deutsches Reisemanagement (German Travel Management Association). For example business flights: Hardly any air traveler considers that at circa eleven kilometers altitude, his or her flight generates up to 2.6 tons of CO2 per 100 kilometers – after all, the heavens are always blue and sunny above the clouds.

This is one explanation why climate protection is especially interesting for companies, and not only for image reasons. But many other people find “carbon offsetting” particularly attractive as well. What is carbon offsetting? Generally, at the time a flight is booked, the probable amount of CO2 that will be generated is calculated, plus an amount of money with which this amount can be neutralized somewhere else. This is made possible by the offers of “compensation partners”. Organizations like Atmosfair (www.atmosfair.de), myclimate (www.myclimate.org), Sustainable Travel International (www.sustainabletravelinternational.org) or Compensate (www.compensate.ch) calculate the exhaust emitted through travel by car, rail or air and organize measures to “compensate” for possible environmental damages. As a rule, the emissions generated are “converted” into financial support for climate protection projects according to the distance traveled and the means of travel used. This enables the use of energy sources in third-world countries to be significantly improved and thus, the emission of CO2 and other greenhouse gases greatly reduced.

Those who take advantage of programs such as these can answer the obligatory question, “How was your flight?” with the (still) unusual answer: “Environmentally neutral!”

It’s easy to say, “I’d like to travel more ecologically, but the travel business doesn’t provide good alternatives.” But what if we instead took care of our own business first… for example, by investing in the so called ‘ActionCarbone’ Program and trying to convince other travel managers by our works – not our words.

ActionCarbone is a non-profit program which proposes to companies, institutions and individuals that they act against climate change by reducing and offsetting their greenhouse gases and thus funding energy efficient, renewable-energy projects developed by NGOs in developing countries. Offsetting is defined as “a financing mechanism by which an individual or entity partially or fully offsets its own emissions by reducing them at the source by purchasing—through a third party—an equivalent amount of carbon credits.

The underlying principle of carbon offsetting is that the amount of greenhouse gas emissions in one place can be ‘offset’ by the reduction or capturing of an equivalent quantity of greenhouse gases elsewhere”(www.actioncarbone.org).

In addition to international standards, the Agency for the Environment and Energy Control (ADEME ) wanted to publish a code of best practices for the voluntary offsetting market in France, i.e. companies that wish to offset emissions or offer this option to their clients, and especially carbon offset providers. Carbon offset providers who signed the code have committed themselves to respecting strict project specifications for the implementation of offsetting projects.

See also www.actioncarbone.org

May we ask you how you are reading this text? On your monitor? Or on paper?

You probably read shorter articles like this one on your monitor. But you probably frequently push the print-button to read articles that are longer than one page. Over 80% of Europeans and US-Americans do the same.

Paper can be touched – and in the truest sense of the word, grasped – while digital documents will always remain virtual. They can’t be touched, i.e. by penciling comments on them, paper-clipping notes to them or by personally marking the most interesting spots. Then there’s a psychological factor: the fear of losing data. Even if you can’t find the piece of paper with the cover letter right at this moment – you know it exists and you know you will be able to find it!

Such arguments are also used to explain a paradox. According to a study by Price Waterhouse Cooper, paper consumption in companies with e-mail systems has increased by 40%. People who receive an e-mail print it out. The consequences for companies are significant. According to Hewlett-Packard, all companies in the world spend approximately five percent of their total income exclusively on printing. Over two-thirds, according to a survey sponsored by Lexmark, don’t even know what their printing costs are. But a company with 100 employees prints around 100,000 sheets of paper per month – resulting in costs of between 40,000 and 120,000 euros.

Every year, nearly 700 billion sheets of paper are unnecessarily printed. In Europe alone, this means costs of 1.4 billion euros per year. Circa 655,000 tons of CO2 are consumed in the production of paper – for nothing.

In German offices alone, an estimated 800,000 tons of paper are printed per year. If one were to load a freight train with this amount of paper, it would be 600 kilometers long and consist of 40,000 wagons. Packaging artist Christo would be able to wrap the Deutsche Reichstag circa 100,000 times with this amount of material.

But there are highly sensible and efficient alternatives to this, for example, deployment of Electronic Document-Management-Systems (EDMS). EDMSs promote intelligent document-handling, because they use another approach in the creation of printed material: while the conventional distribution principle was always “print and distribute”, EDMS works according to the principle “distribute and print”. Documents are stored digitally as long as possible, then distributed, and only then, printed. This substantially reduces distribution and printing costs.