There are essentially two ways to do business: you can stay put and wait for customers to come to you, or you can go out and there and find them. The first approach can work, but unless you’re a shop or a restaurant the second method of winning business is probably the one to focus on.
Heading out the door in search of those elusive clients usually requires some degree of travel. You can’t forge those crucial relationships face-to-face and establish trust if you aren’t there (at least you might think so: more on this later). And travel has one of the largest of carbon footprints. Driving generates CO2 and the aeroplanes which fill our skies rival the dirtiest of cars in the amount of carbon they cough out. The longer the haul, the more the pollution – from around 150 grams of C02 person per kilometre for shorter flights, to somewhere between 250 and 350 grams for longer journeys.
So what’s an environmentally conscious business traveller to do? How do you generate business leads without polluting the planet? The good news is that doing precisely that is much easier to do so now than it once was. The modern traveller has technological options undreamt of just a decade or two ago.
The first point to consider is: are you sure you need to travel at all? Videoconferencing might just do the trick, especially if you have already met the client. A meeting over the internet will spare you a great deal of time and expense. These days there is plenty of easy-to-use, high quality software available for this task, from Microsoft’s Skype through to FaceTime for Macintosh computers, iPhone and iPads. Many new business leads and existing clients will be perfectly receptive to this option.
But if travel is a must, then perhaps you could reconsider your mode of transport? Would a train or bus be an option? Do you really need to hire a car when you arrive at your destination? Why pump out C02 on the way to your client’s office when you could make catch a bus or use one of the growing number of quick and easy ridesharing apps now available?
By pooling multiple travellers into one vehicle, public transport can cut their carbon emissions by as much as 90 per cent.
Cutting carbon frequently goes hand-in-hand with saving money. Why pay for air tickets, petrol or car rental fees if you don’t need to? Boost your budget and cut your carbon footprint at the same time: that’s the best possible way to be a responsible global citizen!
And here’s something else to think about; why not track your carbon footprint as precisely as you track your business expenses and overheads? Here again tech can help: there are several carbon calculators are available online – for example here. Adding up those figures and examining all the data can be a very educational exercise.
Image by Hadley Paul Garland (Creative Commons licence)
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