🌱 Getting to grips with your business travel emissions
+ we share the relative emissions per passenger km for different methods
Happy Monday! Every Monday we suit up and get serious - digging into a climate topic, rounding up the past week’s Good(s) News and sharing updates from across FTF, so you’re never out of the loop.
For some of us getting to travel for work is a real perk! The irony is of course that as sustainability professionals we are even more likely to get a pang of eco-anxiety when travelling to conferences, meetings, site/supplier visits or trade shows. Not to mention the cost of making the most eco-friendly choice when the budget is tight. Well, today Ros is here to help us (she does this for a living ya know!) take the confusion out of tracking our travel data…which will hopefully set us up in good stead to make sustainable choices!
Once you’ve digested all that juicy knowledge, read on to get this week’s good news from consumer goods x sustainability, and find out what events our team are attending this coming week…
> In Focus
The Road to Sustainability: Tracking Corporate Travel Emissions
It’s no secret that travel is a heavy emitter. A whopping 25% of energy-related emissions come from travel, with aviation alone responsible for 2.5% of global emissions. And unfortunately, travel’s footprint doesn’t look like it’s shrinking anytime soon. The IPCC classified international travel as one of the hard to abate sectors, meaning it’s stubborn to decarbonise. While Net Zero solutions for travel are emerging in the form of Sustainable Aviation Fuels, tech and operational innovations, the industry still currently relies on carbon offsets.
Before we dive in, the difference between business travel and employee commuting is:
Business travel refers to trips employees take for work purposes, such as meetings, conferences, or client visits. Employee commuting is the daily travel employees make to get to and from their regular workplace (e.g., office or factory).
So, what does this mean for your business? For office-based companies, business travel (or Scope 3.6 for the carbon accountants among us) makes up a hefty chunk of their supply chain emissions. If your business manufactures a physical product, the majority of your scope 3 emissions probably come from production, upstream transportation, and disposal rather than travel. Still, business travel can be a significant source, and unlike emissions from suppliers, it’s something you and your employees can directly control. Travel emissions are directly tied to employee actions, which makes it a great area to focus on. Plus, travel data is usually detailed, giving you a perfect opportunity to test out initiatives like carbon budgets or pricing before applying them to other areas of your operations.
Have I convinced you to think more about how you measure your business travel emissions? My boss (and the planet) will be proud. So how do you go about doing that?
Step one: Data, data, data
The accuracy of your calculations and granularity of your reduction insights depend on the data you can collect. Typical sources for business travel data include from your travel expenses, travel management company or your company's travel itineraries you manually track. What data should you extract from these platforms or sources? Aim for, in order of desirability:
Fuel use (this is gold tier, but very uncommon for companies to have access to for vehicles they don’t own. Not to worry as this can be estimated using the data points below)
Origin and destinations of travel (for air IATA codes are preferred, but country or cities can be converted)
Flight numbers, carriers and ticket class for air (for enhanced methodology)
Travel dates, purpose of travel and traveller identifier (for reporting and your insights)
Distance travelled
Travel cost (for each mode of travel: air, car hire, rail, bus, hotels)
Step two: Choose your fighter methodology
What methodology you use to calculate your travel emissions depends on what data you were able to collect in the previous step.
If you have fuel use » you can use a fuel-based method. If you don’t have access to fuel burn but you have origin and destination airport, class and aircraft type you can use fuel-based methodologies ICAO and IATA as the methodologies apply a fuel burn data.
If you have distance based data you can use a distance-based method like DEFRA.
If you only have spend » you can use spend-based methodology.
If you have limited travel you can perform the calculation manually using these methodologies linked above, or alternatively you may be able to source your emissions directly from your travel management company or online booking tool, like Trainline Business and Uber for Business. There are also business calculators like Thrust Carbon.
Step three: Data driven actions
Understanding your business’s travel emissions allows you to make informed decisions that drive the most impactful actions for your company. The more detailed and accurate your data, the more targeted your insights and solutions will be. But don’t let a lack of perfect data hold you back. There are proven actions that consistently lead to emissions reductions, even based on industry averages.
Here are a few steps you can take right away:
Fly less: For domestic or European trips, swap flights for high-speed rail. Trainline offers a handy map of Europe’s growing rail network.
Fly smarter: Google Flights provides emissions data for different flight options. Generally, to reduce flight emissions opt for direct flights and economy class.
Electrify: Skip the fossil fuel-powered rental car and opt for an electric vehicle (EV) instead.
Share the journey: Carpool where possible, switch to bus or train, and travel with your colleagues to reduce the number of taxis (and data points to collect). Did you know there are apps for carpooling with
strangersfuture friends? Try BlablaCar or liftshare.Active transport: Walking or cycling (including e-bikes) is the most sustainable mode of transport, and it comes with health benefits. This advice is for shorter trips - I’m not recommending you swim across the Atlantic.
Lessons from COVID: Is that trip really necessary, or could it be a video call? Business didn’t cease to exist when business travel did in 2020, so make sure each trip is truly essential.
> Follow up with…
Guide: Reducing Emissions from Business Travel, SME Climate Hub
Calculator: Carbon Emissions Calculator (for flights), ICAO
> Last week in consumer goods x climate…
The Good(s) News
»Up and coming brands
🎯 Citizens of Soil announced their partnership with Notpla to deliver their Spanish Extra Virgin Olive Oil in Notpla’s seaweed-derived Pipettes. The material is 100% natural, biodegradable and home-compostable, and the intuitive design is allowing precise and controlled pouring.
🎯 The Boot Repair Company announced that after their Dr. Martens repair service launched last year, 1,500 boots and shoes for resale and 5,000 total including sandals and bags are refurbished, repaired and ready for resale. With every sole carried out with support from Dr. Martens, providing them support to carry out each repair to the highest standard.
🎯 Renais (a luxury gin brand), Nature’s Journey (a skincare and aromatherapy brand) and Maison Dandoy (a Belgian biscuit brand) announced that they are B Corp certified.
🎯 Evanesce, an American sustainable service, announced that they are going to produce 7.5 million drinking straws made from Biodolmer, a compostable material based on limestone. This is developed and manufactured in Sweden by Gaia Biomaterials.
»Bigger organisations
⭐ Nestle announced its first-of-its-kind trial on a paper Quality Street tub in selected Tesco supermarkets, where it can be put in kerbside recycling after use. This trial will see over 200,000 paper tubs expected in stores during this festive season.
⭐ Sainsbury’s announced that they are selling ‘greener’ mushrooms where it is grown without peat. This carbon friendlier produce is expected to cut its peat usage by 20,465 tonnes a year. It is also produced by using a casing layer of UK-sourced “natural recycled materials” developed by mushroom producer Monaghan and by-products from agricultural industries.
»Industry wins
⚡️California passes the Responsible Textile Recovery Act of 2024 into law this week, making apparel and textile producers responsible for creating a plan to collect, repair and recycle their products. First introduced in February 2023, this bill applies to apparel and textile articles that are unsuitable for reuse in their current condition.
Want good news sooner? We post our top 5 stories in our LinkedIn newsletter every Friday! If your CPG brand has good news to share, let us know.👇
> In case you missed it
Want more? Here’s what’s happening across FTF at the moment…
Henry is attending Cheers! the Drinks Summit by Bread & Jam this week.
Lexi will be attending and volunteering at Sustainable Brands this week. (Lexi is great with events, if you need help with your stateside events, hit her up!)
Ruby had breakfast with Innocent at their event “Getting down to the core on access to fruit & veg” She says she left the roundtable feeling inspired by the work being done to alleviate access to healthy food but with the reminder of how big the gap is and how much work there is to do.
Want more? Hang tight for ‘The Check-Out’ this Thursday for the latest brands in our basket. In the meantime, if you have any topics that you would like us to dig into, ping us an email on info@followingthefootprints.com to say hi!
Much love,
Team FTF
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