Home | What we’re doing | News
Smarter Working: “Lean and Green”
Monday July 6th 09
MD Stuart Maister interviewed by Smarter Working on how more and more companies are saving money by reducing carbon emissions
“Our mission is to inspire people to care about the planet, so it makes sense for us to think how we bring down our carbon production,” says Maurice Van Sabben, president of National Geographic Television International. National Geographic has done more than most companies to bring down its carbon emissions: among other initiatives it has created “green Fridays” across the company in summer months, where everyone can work at home so that the air conditioning in offices is shut down. The Washington DC head office is already carbon neutral. Yet, Van Sabben was still jumping on a flight to London every four or five weeks. The desire to cut carbon emissions was one of the primary drivers of a policy which has changed the way that National Geographic works, and is now helping the company to work more efficiently. Not every company has the mandate to care for the environment as part of its core values, but few companies are not now thinking about saving money, and one of the easiest ways to save is to cut business travel.
As Stuart Maister, managing director of conferencing company Broadview, says, “it’s a time when budgets are slashed and there’s a massive green imperative. We are removing the need for travel, but helping save carbon too.” In 2008, Broadview organised a webcast medical conference in New Orleans. It asked carbon management specialists co2balance to estimate the CO2 emissions of a webcast conference and compare it with an event attended in person by the same number of people. The conclusion was that each person watching the webcast would have used 3.7 tonnes more CO2 if they had physically attended - that’s the same amount of CO2 333 trees would absorb in a year - multiplying their CO2 footprint by 17,222 times. As well as saving the cost of travel and time out of the office, Maister believes that virtual meetings can also be more productive. “The chief executive might want to speak to staff, but without the need for physical interface you can still ask questions and take part. They can ask questions, they can vote, they can go on to build an online conversation afterwards. We are removing the need for travel, but helping conferences to reach a lot more people. An event that 100 people would have attended is suddenly accessible to thousands.” 
Geir Olsen, president, Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) at TANDBERG, leading global provider of telepresence and highdefinition video conferencing, offers potential customers the opportunity to calculate the reduction in their carbon footprint they could achieve by replacing meetings with video links. “We estimate that deploying video results in a 30 per cent reduction in travel,” he says, “and the beauty is that there is no contradiction whatsoever between a cost reduction and the carbon benefit. In this case, they are complementary.” Many companies have already made video conferencing a fundamental part of their carbon reduction strategy. Natural England, the government advisory body on wildlife and the environment, used video conferencing at its annual conference to cut carbon emissions by 31 per cent on the previous year. Instead of one conference for all 2,500 employees, it used seven locations linked by video. Telecoms company Cable&Wireless claims that in the last 12 months video conferencing saved 600 tonnes of CO2, and £2,279,951 on business travel. It is no surprise that the leaders in saving money by reducing emissions tend to be either telecoms companies, who are well-placed to build the high-capacity networks needed to maximise usage, and save costs; or companies motivated by the green agenda. There is good evidence though
Comments
Add a Comment
Comments are not currently being accepted on this article.
jghkljgkjg
By content_admin on July 6th 2009