B.T. Drops Its Carbon Footprint with Teleconferencing
Source: GreenerComputing.com
LONDON, May 31, 2007
Replacing business travel with teleconferencing has allowed British Telecom to avoid more than 860,000 face-to-face meetings worldwide and saved at least 97,000 tons of carbon emissions, according to a new survey.
The survey, conducted by the University of Bradford and SustainIT, looked at the economic, environmental and social impact of conferencing at B.T. A sample of 6,000 B.T. staff from across the company were surveyed on their use of conferencing, with the findings extended to B.T. as a whole and annualized.
The use of conferencing and collaboration services enable people to conduct meetings with colleagues via telephone, video or web, facilitating speedier decision making, increased productivity and a reduction in associated travel costs.
The survey showed that every conference call that replaced a meeting saved a minimum of 88 pounds of travel-related CO2. Air travel accounted for 48 percent of avoided miles, but only 8 percent of avoided trips.
In addition, each call avoided travel and subsistence costs of at least £178, freeing up £120 of management time for more productive purposes. In the last year, this equated to a benefit of £238 million for B.T. as a whole - £135 million in avoided travel and subsistence costs, and the equivalent of £103 million in total time saved.
More than 80 percent of B.T. people surveyed had increased their use of conferencing in the previous two years, while the average number of people involved in each call had risen to more than 12 compared to an average of nine the previous year. 28 percent of B.T. staff surveyed had used conferencing from home.
"The results of the survey confirm beyond all doubt that conferencing can make a major impact towards reducing the carbon footprint of companies and their employees," said Aaron McCormack, CEO of B.T. Conferencing.
"Travel disruptions and security concerns are focusing many people's attention on the possibility of substituting electronic for physical meetings," said the report's author, Peter James of SustainIT. "The results are very positive -- conferencing technologies can reduce transport time and costs, and help to achieve more efficient and effective work and better work-life balance for users."
B.T.'s head of environment, Mike Hughes, added, "Increasingly in B.T. our conferencing services are the preferred way to manage day-to-day meetings, enabling B.T. people to better manage their work-life balance and saves huge amounts of traveling with its associated costs and environmental impacts."