Transport: Where to Start?

Where to start?

One of the main areas to look at when it comes to reducing emissions from transport in your company is business travel and employee commuting.

Start Small, think big

Calculating your company’s greenhouse gas emissions derived from both employee commuting and business travel is a great way to start. It will help to identify which are the largest carbon dioxide emission sources and create an action plan for carbon reduction. 

Calculate your business travel and employee commute emissions

There are a few ways to calculate your emissions for travel and it will depend on the information you have available. These methods are:

  • Fuel-based method, which involves determining the amount of fuel consume
  • Distance-based method, collecting data from employees on commuting patterns and business travel
  • Average-data method, estimating emissions from employee commuting based on national average commuting patterns

What can you do now?

Here are some ideas your company can implement to make travel more environmentally-friendly without compromising the business:

  1. Reduce Journeys

The simplest way to cut emissions caused by travel is to avoid it. The pandemic has taught us that we can, where necessary, switch our meetings to online video conferencing and that we can still connect with our employees and customers.

  1. Green Travel Programme

When creating a green business travel programme, setting a baseline is the best place to start. From there you can define clear goals and incentivise employees to make the right choices.  Don’t forget to outline how progress will be monitored and measured, as well as who will be responsible for it. Make sure no one travels anywhere for just one meeting.

  1. Commuting Support

Make it easy for employees to go green. 

  • Locate offices near public transport hubs
  • Provide showers and changing facilities for cyclists, walkers and runners
  • Have a bike repair station
  • Use tax relief supports for bikes and electric cars
  • Install electric charging points
  1. Fly Economy

First class and business class seats can generate up to twice the amount of carbon emissions. This is due to the larger area occupied by these seat classes, as well as the extra weight of the luggage allowance. An easy swap to short haul destinations.

  1. Carbon Offsetting is the Last Resort

All travel, no matter how sustainable, generates CO2 emissions. Consider carbon off setting. This means encouraging a reduction of carbon emissions in order to compensate for emissions generated by you or your company, often in the form of donation to green projects. The cost is around 0.5% of the overall trip cost to offset 100% of each journey’s emissions. This by no means the answer, reducing journeys in the first place is the goal.