Business Green: How to draw up a green travel policy

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.

For more go to: Business Green