In keeping with its stated goal of advocating corporate social responsibility, the Association of Corporate Travel Executives late last month on its Web site launched a tool that allows members to calculate the amount of carbon dioxide emissions from their company's air and ground transportation. The tool aims to help the business travel industry determine its toll on the environment through CO2 emissions.
Available only to ACTE members, the tool was pioneered by The CarbonNeutral Co., a London-based organization focused on climate change through the reduction and neutralization of CO2 emissions. The company's CEO, Jonathan Shopley, said in a statement, "Using calculators to understand CO2 impacts is the first step; from there it's possible to consider alternatives—Webconferencing instead of domestic flights, for example—and then to offset unavoidable emissions, supporting low-carbon technologies in the process."
ACTE president Greeley Koch said this is the first of many steps in the organization's approach to corporate social responsibility. "Our association is committed to a policy that promotes restoring the environment and improves life for everyone through advanced business practices," he said in a statement. "This Carbon Calculator will provide a way for ACTE members worldwide to assess their impact on their environment and identify the necessary steps to minimizing that impact."
Koch said an ongoing study by ACTE's Corporate Social Responsibility Advisory Committee finds that many companies prefer to do business with other businesses pursuing corporate social responsibility policies similar to their own.
Corporate social responsibility was a strongly emphasized point at the ACTE conference in Atlanta last month, when the association announced it would join Carlson Companies in the fight against the trafficking of women and children by signing the "End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes" code of conduct, and work with a Center for Disease Control and Prevention task force to ensure the business travel industry is prepared for a possible avian flu pandemic
(BTN, May 15).