I’m soon to fly off to San Francisco for work. I’ve always wanted to go and have even considered taking some flowers for my hair (but I was worried about getting through Customs).
It will be my first time visiting the city and it will give me an opportunity to catch up with colleagues as well as clients I have worked with for a while but not been to visit.
Hang on a minute, I’m a sustainability advisor. What am I doing flying?
Some more honest sustainability experts like Mayer Hillman wouldn’t do it. “Be the future you want to see,” they might say. But I like to meet people face to face, to establish a relationship and therefore be more able to understand them and communicate with them in the future.
At Two Tomorrows, we believe that the advice and training we give makes enough of a difference to organisational behaviour to make flying worthwhile. But we need to be sure we’re not travelling unnecessarily.
We recently signed up to 10:10 and a commitment to reduce energy. This will be tricky for us as we are a growing business that works internationally. We have always been quite careful in the way we operate and therefore have less scope to take low-hanging fruit. But, hey, we like a challenge.
We may stand a chance if we normalise our energy consumption to our turnover, for example. Will this deliver a 90% reduction in emissions, speedily taking us to atmospheric CO2 concentrations of 350ppm – a more acceptable level? No. As much as possible, absolute reductions of emissions are needed and all businesses have a response to make.
So, to travel or not to travel – that is the big question.
A lot can be achieved with technology. Getting the best video conferencing facilities can be hugely costly but very effective. Sometimes a webcam works wonders, other times you can get stuck in the ether, frozen while your voice call continues. Often the phone, e-mail and virtual messaging works just fine. And in future, improving technology will bring us better virtual meetings, making it easier to decide not to travel.
Another important route is to build local capacity – something that is as relevant to a consultancy firm like ours as it is to a global corporation with tens of thousands of employees.
But we have a real challenge to face up to today. As well as continuing to get our carbon offsets, we will have to take a hard look at how we do business – as will our clients.
Tags: 10:10, climate change, dave knight, sustainability, Two Tomorrows