Citing similar internal initiatives by multinational clients including Nike and Hewlett-Packard, BCD Travel has formalized and expanded corporate social responsibilityprinciples first created by predecessor firm WorldTravel Partners to focus on ethical business practices, people and environmental sustainability.
As part of the refreshed look at CSR, BCD selected the non-profit German group atmosfair as its global carbon offsetting provider and implemented within its consulting arm, Advito, a portfolio of related advisory services. The TMC also expanded globally its emissions reporting solution.
Designed to guide Advito's client work and all company divisions, including BCD Meetings & Incentives, the CSR principles emphasize ethical business in accordance with the law; a positive community influence; fairness, health and safety for employees; environmental efficiency; and user privacy and data protection.
According to BCD Travel CEO Mike Buckman, "Over the past six months, we've seen a significant increase in tenders, for example, that require detailed information about our CSR stance and initiatives. Especially in European bids, this is no longer a 'check the box' throwaway."
Advito general manager and BCD executive committee member Mary Ellen George said the "large multinationals we serve, and especially their senior executives, are asking challenging questions about how they can be more responsible with travel management." She added that she expects "the majority" of BCD's multinational clients to "jump on this carbon emissions thing to at least diagnose it." More broadly, she said, traveler productivity concerns, as well as those related to the environment, are prompting clients to consider whether travel is in line with socially responsible objectives. "So that's where you have videoconferencing services and risk management consulting--all kinds of things that spin off from this," George added.
According to a new BCD white paper on CSR, "Some businesses view CSR as an added cost which is in conflict with a company's fiscal objectives and commitment to deliver the highest returns to stakeholders. In fact, the opposite is true. Companies can face irreparable commercial damage from failure to develop a sound CSR policy. Even if the creation and maintenance of a CSR program adds line-item costs, if managed properly, a CSR program will help to ensure a company's long-term sustainability and thus to protect stakeholders' interests."
Yet caution is warranted, the paper advised. "It is not always true that reducing, eliminating or replacing travel is in the best interest of the company and its stakeholders. This varies by industry and company travel volumes. While reducing travel will lessen a company's environmental footprint and eliminate costs from the travel budget, it may negatively impact the company's competitive interests and operations, and thus its long-term sustainability, resulting in redundancies and lower shareholder returns. In this same way, a company which mandates that employees travel for longer periods of time (e.g., rail versus short-haul flight), or avoid an overnight stay in the interest of the environment or reducing travel costs, must consider the productivity implications of such policies, as well as perform a thorough risk assessment of the impact on employees' well-being."
Such thorough examination, of course, requires thorough data collection.
According to the white paper, "1,500 companies worldwide [are] producing a dedicated CSR report, compared with less than 100 in 1993." Hewlett-Packard's Global Citizenship Report, for example, indicated that, "carbon-dioxide emissions caused by its travel rose from 226,000 metric tons in 2003 to 279,000 in 2005."
BCD Travel recently expanded its carbon emission reporting service globally, helping clients determine their carbon footprints and informing them of how they might approach such remedies as carbon offsets. Carbon offsetting seeks to neutralize carbon dioxide emissions through investments that save or store an equivalent amount of CO2, BCD noted. Carbon offset providers finance climate protection projects that feature renewable energies or increase energy efficiency.
Its observations of trends within multinational clients prompted BCD about six months ago to initiate an extensive search for a carbon-offset provider. BCD said the criteria used for its screening included: "the company profile (for profit versus non-profit, length of tenure in industry); the percentage of income dedicated directly to emissions-reducing projects; the quality of the offset projects invested in; the presence of third-party standards and/or verification; the price per ton of carbon offset; and the degree of transparency exhibited by the candidate." Atmosfair was developed by a German tour operators group and the environmental association Germanwatch. The not-for-profit promotes a variety of environmental projects, largely in the Third World.