NINE out of ten big businesses aim to cut their staff's air travel over the next decade and do more videoconferencing instead.
The environmental charity WWF found 89 per cent of the FTSE-300 companies it surveyed wanted to fly less, and 85 per cent thought videoconferencing had the potential to reduce the number of business flights.
The report, published today, also reve
aled 89 per cent felt videoconferencing could boost productivity in the workplace.
Of the 100 companies surveyed, almost three-quarters have developed, or are in the process of developing, a policy to encourage green business travel.
Dr Dan Barlow, the acting director of WWF Scotland, said: "Our report reveals that there is a real appetite among many of the country's biggest businesses to reduce the number of flights they take.
"For many companies, travel is a major contributor to their carbon footprint – more than 50 per cent in some cases – and green alternatives such as videoconferencing not only provide a swift solution for cutting carbon, they can also save businesses time and money."
WWF wants firms to set targets to cut one in five flights. The charity says if all European companies cut their business travel by 20 per cent and used videoconferencing instead, it would save 22 million tonnes of each year – the equivalent of taking a third of the UK's cars off the road.
Royal Bank of Scotland was one of the companies surveyed. Its UK staff travelled 198 million kilometres in 2006, compared with 182 million the previous year. But RBS is now investing heavily in videoconferencing and hopes that will reduce its reliance on air travel. Since 2004, it has almost doubled the number of videoconferencing facilities from 430 to about 800.
Last year, 35,256 participants took part in 13,292 separate videoconferences between their offices.
Stefton Laing, the bank's corporate responsibility manager, said videoconferencing worked particularly well for short meetings.
But he said it was difficult to say for sure whether it was replacing flights.
"All we can do is count up how many videoconferences we have had," he said. "It might have been a phone call otherwise, not a flight, so it's difficult to say."
He said the company aimed to reduce flights not just for environmental reasons. "The main driver is probably cost because it's very expensive to fly people around, but it's a bit of both. It's an environmental win and a cost win as well," he said.
Dr Barlow said the results of the survey also raised an important message for the government over the need to expand airports.
"If business travellers are increasingly choosing to hold virtual meetings instead of taking flights, then the case for airport expansion begins to evaporate," he said.
The full article contains 467 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
