THE BUYERS ANGELA SMITH, travel manager, Carillion
MANY COMPANIES NOWADAYS HAVE some sort of sustainability programme. However, if you are just starting out you need to consider how people travel; look at other ways they could meet that would reduce your CO2. Around 80 per cent of our travel is domestic. Therefore, we look to encourage people to go by train instead of plane where possible. This is done through regular communication at booker forums, in newsletters and email alerts. We also use self-booking tools to communicate messages to employees at the point of booking. It’s also important to have your sus- tainability goals in the travel policy. Make sure there is regular reference to these goals when communicating with bookers and travellers. Setting a reduction target is also a good idea, as it lets you work towards something and ensures you don’t get complacent. You could also communicate how you are doing towards this target, on perhaps a quarterly basis.
BUYINGBUSINESSTRAVEL.COM
You need to engage suppliers – par- ticularly TMCs, as they need to know what you want to achieve – and at the same time you need to be happy that they are also working in line with these goals within their own company. If you want to go further, you may want to engage with airlines to find out what type of aircraft they use. It may be one of the deciding factors when choosing a preferred carrier. Look at hotel partners and engage them in discussions about sustainability at review meetings.
WILL HASLER, travel manager, PWC
SUSTAINABILITY IS NOW A MAJOR AREA of business. Government legislation makes the topic impossible to ignore. PWC UK started measuring CO2 in 2007. As it sells intellect and not tangible products, clients often insist PWC staff work in their offices. While the clients have reduced heating and light in their buildings, air travel carbon has increased
as a percentage of overall emissions. In the UK, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs [Defra] provides the measurements. It is a credible govern- ment department, not a supplier telling you how ethical they are. Defra supplies multipliers for the type of trip. Your TMC tells you the mileage of the flight and you have your CO2 output. PWC soon refined its results by stripping out non-billable/ business development flights, which we were more in control of. Challenges? Once you start, you want
more granular measures so you can track more accurately. For example, how old is the plane? Why can’t we differentiate between diesel and electric trains? Why is the hotel industry so poor at providing robust data? Most hotel spend is spread over too many suppliers and no one third party reports on more than a few chains. Another frustration is that Defra
refines air measurements periodically to take account of different atmospheric gasses. You then restate all prior years so you are comparing like-with-like. On a non travel-related emission issue, if you are tenant in a landlord-run building, you may not be able to change quickly the way you heat and light your floor. Changing how a corporation conducts business, especially in an upturn, is chal- lenging in an un-mandated environ- ment. It’s easy for more traditionally ‘green’ organisations, such as the WWF [World Wide Fund for Nature], to ban domestic flights, but if PWC did that, it would lose consultants and auditors to its competitors.
BBT MAY/JUNE 2015 41
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