“The average return flight from london to Washington DC
produces 1.64 tonnes of CO2 per person”
disruption. It was the first time a Unilever global category board Even on the small screen, video conferencing allows people to
had spoken to its entire community in this way, and it was a big meet face-to-face, however far apart they are physically. And
success. A delegate from Chicago said: “It was great to interact because it adds the power of eye contact and body language to
with the global brand directors. It’s so much more powerful when discussion, it helps people build better working relationships.
you hear them talking spontaneously about the business issues.”
Unilever now plans to make such events a regular feature of its But the next generation of video conferencing promises to be
internal communications. even more effective. In February 2007, for example, BT launched
a groundbreaking video conferencing service in Germany that
Effective solutions allows participants to see remote participants as life-sized images
sitting with them around a meeting table. Potential uses for high-
As these examples show, business travel is often more a case of resolution services such as this include not only business meetings
habit than necessity. If people are encouraged to use alternatives, but also telemedicine and ‘remote teaching’ in particular.
they will – especially now the alternatives are so attractive.
Conferencing calls
Audio conferencing remains the most widely used solution and is
remarkably effective. However, it clearly isn’t the answer in every Overall, then, there is little excuse for companies not to reign back
situation. Sometimes, you have to be able to work together on on business travel, reap savings and efficiency improvements
documents or look the other person in the eyes. through the use of conferencing and do their bit for the environment
at the same time.
Web conferencing and desktop video conferencing address these
issues. As Unilever and others have found, web conferencing BT estimates that every meeting between its UK employees that’s
supports most things from classroom learning to product launches, completed by conference call saves at least 32 kg of travel-related
and from sales presentations to CEO pep talks. carbon dioxide emissions in comparison to one held face to face.
33 | ecoexecutive
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