Sustainability and making your business travel count
While the obvious answer for sustainability is traveling less, the reality is that many companies depend on travel. That’s why we believe the trick is to make it count. By making each trip, each journey purposeful and impactful, you’re taking change into your own hands.
This means that each time your team members board a flight, the trip should have a clear purpose. Whether it is combining several trips into one, or arranging meetings and events in the same or nearby cities, the opportunities are endless. You can choose rail over flight where possible, offsetting carbon, staying in eco-friendly accommodations, using car share or carpooling.
Tech Support
If you’re looking into ways that your business can make travel more sustainable, we’re happy to help. Your customer success manager can give you ideas of where to optimize your travel and how to track your mileage using our technology. They can show you how to use Melon for things like:
- Carbon reporting to provide full visibility on your travel emissions
- Carbon analysis to look at how to reduce your impact
- Carbon offsetting to offset the environmental impact of your travel
Small Steps for Greater Impact
Talking about sustainability means also talking about measuring impact on travelers and bottom lines. Every action has a reaction, right? In conversations about sustainability, our customer success managers can showcase how some sustainability goals impact traveler wellness and how the cost relates to your company. For example, reducing the number of connections on a flight are huge wins to being sustainable in travel, and the travelers always appreciate that, but they come with a higher price cost to your business. Or, you might decide to choose a red-eye flight to save time on the overall trip and cost of the flight, but the time may not be ideal for your team member’s wellbeing.
Convinced? Explore your options today!
Chris Garrard, a Senior Customer Success Manager for Corporate Traveler, is passionate about sustainability. When asked what considerations he makes in his own travel, he explained, “I’ve got a big trip coming up and I offset the travel for that. For me it permeates everything. It’s sort of like you can’t unsee once you understand things like carbon cycle and supply chain.”
How airlines are helping
Though airline travel is far from sustainable, some airlines are committed to changing the narrative. For example, KLM is working to lead the industry in increasing the demand for Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAF). CO2 emissions are reduced by up to 75% when SAFs replace kerosene, but many airlines don’t use SAF because of cost, little production and limited availability. If the demand was increased, production would increase, and SAF would be more accessible to airlines to make the switch. As of 2022, for all KLM flights departing Amsterdam, the airline will blend a small amount of SAF. Though it is not the perfect solution yet, it is still a remarkable change.
United Airlines has joined the First Movers Coalition along with more than 30 companies who are committed to using 250 million gallons of sustainable fuels by 2030. That’s around 5% of their fuel consumption. United also has a wider, more ambitious goal of reaching net-zero by 2050, which is achievable as more airlines make commitments to sustainability.
Small steps lead to greater leaps
As the world reopens and businesses revamp their travel program, for many, priorities are shifting. Consolidating the needs of their employees with the needs for the planet, while maintaining a healthy bottom line is a tricky balance, but it’s not impossible. Small impacts are greater than no impact and taking an interest in doing better already puts you ahead. Talk to your teams about what sustainability means to them and what changes in your program would be meaningful. Commit to what you can do now and plan to do more in 6 months or a year.
What does sustainability mean to you?
When we asked Michelle Degenhardt, Global Sustainability Officer at our parent company Flight Centre Travel Group, what sustainability means to her, she summed it up beautifully. “Sustainability is ensuring that our actions today have a positive impact on the future state of the planet. For me it's about reducing our impact on the natural environment and making the world a better place for everyone.”
