In a perfectly sustainable world, drafting a green travel policy document would involve little more than grabbing a sheet of A4 paper and scribbling the words "all business travel is banned henceforth" in bright green felt-tip pen.

The simplest and most effective way to make business travel more sustainable
is to take a default position that it shouldn’t happen and then make anyone who
disagrees justify why a business trip is necessary.

Unfortunately, back in the real world, some sort of business-related travel
is a necessity for all but a handful of virtual, online companies made up of
homeworkers, and even those companies that take a zero-tolerance approach to
corporate travel still have no way of avoiding the commuting staff have to do to
actually get to the office.

It might be nice to think in binary terms about business travel – that is,
it’s either on or off – but the reality is that for most companies, as with most
other aspects of sustainable business practice, an intelligent approach to
cutting carbon emissions from travel policy is predicated on balance and
compromise. And that means developing some form of green travel policy.

Free advice

Luckily for those companies that have not yet tackled the problem of drafting
such a policy, plenty of advice is available.

The obvious and expensive step would be to hire a green consultancy to do the
legwork but given these financially tumultuous times, it might not be easy to
get that particular capital expenditure past the board. However, for those
companies that are brave and perhaps sensible enough to go it alone, plenty of
free advice is available. For example, the Department of Transport has a
section
of its sustainability site devoted to green travel planning with numerous
reports, case studies and guides on how to go about the task.

As with any corporate policy, the first step towards the development of a
green travel policy lies in identifying the business case. According to
government figures, greenhouse gas emissions from all travel accounts for about
21 per cent of the UK’s domestic emissions. Of this, car travel accounts for
about 92 per cent of total travel emissions with business-related journeys
accounting for about 37 per cent of all car journeys. Add in the fact that
business travellers make up a sizable chunk of rail and air passengers and it is
clear that business-related travel makes a sizable contribution to the UK’s
total carbon emissions. It also represents one of the largest discretionary
costs for many firms, ensuring that there is both a strong environmental and
commercial case for reducing business travel where possible.

Metrics are key

The next step after effectively creating the business case for drafting a
travel plan is to kick off the process by working out the size of the problem,
according to Tony Rooke, practice leader in sustainability at IT consultancy
Logica. "The first thing you have to do when putting together a travel policy is
benchmark where you are," he says. "There is no point putting together a massive
policy document if it is only addressing 20 per cent of the problem and you are
using 80 per cent effort to get that 20 per cent. You want it the other way
around."

According to Rooke, benchmarking should begin by using existing metrics such
as travel-related accounts as an initial gauge. "Ask yourself, ‘What travel do
we already record?’ Things such as expenses, travel agents, delivery companies
can provide much of the data you need," he advises.

Logica has had its environmental policy in place since 1999 and has managed
to cut its air travel from more than 18.5 million miles in 2006 to 11 million
miles in 2008, while car travel was reduced from more than 16 million miles to
just over 9 million miles in 2009.

In addition to getting early metrics in place, the Department for Transport
lays out a series of recommendations in its
Essential
Guide To Travel Planning report. These include appointing one person to
oversee the project, a "travel planning co-ordinator", who should ideally have
enough authority to engage with the key decision makers in the business, and
ensuring that any travel policy document includes "concrete measures" that go
beyond corporate theory and will have a tangible impact on travel emissions and
costs.

The report also advises that those concrete measures should be backed up by
"committed resources", including financial and non-financial resources, and that
companies should consider adhering to an industry standard such as the ISO14001
environmental management standard when developing the policy.

"A travel plan can make a strong contribution to achieving emissions
reductions required under an ISO14001 standard," the report concludes. "
Equally, ISO14001 can be a useful way to help ensure that a travel plan is kept
on course."

Concrete measures

But what should those concrete measures be? What policies are most effective
at cutting carbon emissions and fuel bills?

Thankfully, there is a huge range of options available to suit almost every
budget and size of organisation.

The starting point for any policy has to be avoiding travel whereever
possible. That means ensuring that home and remote working is available where
suitable, and deploying videoconferencing systems where budgets allow. Many
firms that have deployed videoconferencing promote take-up by forcing executives
to explain why they cannot use the technology for a meeting whenever they book a
business trip.

The next step is to address emissions from commutes with potential policies
ranging from low-cost options, such as organising car pooling for staff or
limiting parking spaces, to more ambitious schemes such as laying on buses,
providing incentives for employees who purchase green vehicles, and building
shower and bike store facilities.

Of course some travel is unavoidable, and as a result the onus is on the
travel policy to ensure carbon emissions and costs from such journeys are kept
to a minimum. That means ensuring all company cars are as fuel efficient as
possible – a policy made even more attractive by new government tax breaks on
low-emission vehicles – and stopping executives from flying where lower-carbon
alternatives such as rail are available. For example, under BBC Worldwide’s
travel policy, executives can only fly when travelling by train adds more than
three hours to the journey, while Friends of the Earth goes further still,
insisting staff take the train if the journey time is less than 10 hours.

Finally, it is at this point that the company can also make a decision to
offset emissions from unavoidable travel, although the pros and cons of carbon
offsetting are probably worth a policy document of their own.

Checklist

• Get management buy-in by laying out the business case for the travel plan
  

• Appoint one person to oversee the development and enforcement of the plan
  

• Make sure the plan includes concrete and achievable action and is not just
  aspirational

• Consider adhering to a recognised industry standard such as ISO14001

• Measure the size of the problem using existing metrics such as travel
  expenses

• Consider the travel plan in terms of a complete environmental policy rather
  than focusing on travel exclusively

• Learn from best practice by investigating what other companies are doing
  

• Be prepared to take radical action if necessary such as introducing a
  complete parking ban one day a week

Useful resources:

Department
For Transport Case studies and reports on sustainable transport

Energy
Saving Trust Transport planning advice for Scottish businesses

Sustrans
Focus on cycling and other low-carbon transport alternatives

Carbon
Trust How to calculate organisational carbon footprints