Sustainable travel management - saves costs and the climate

How can you minimize the negative impact of all travel around events? Think about business travel as well as your own fleet of vehicles, employee commutes to the office or job site, site visits, and more.

Reducing travel cuts energy consumption and CO₂ emissions as well as costs and time. It's also less stressful - for everyone involved. Thanks to digitization, some trips have become superfluous and also make home office, new work and remote work possible.

Travel management and the transport sector in Germany

"The transport sector has so far not made a sufficient contribution to climate protection. It is the only sector in which greenhouse gas emissions have remained virtually unchanged in relation to the base year 1990. In 2018, they amounted to 162 million metric tons of CO₂ equivalents in Germany. This corresponds to around one-fifth of total German greenhouse gas emissions [BMU 2019a]. According to the German government's projection report, emissions from the transport sector will only fall marginally to around 159 million metric tons of CO₂ equivalents by 2030 if no additional climate protection efforts are launched [BMU 2019b]. In order to achieve the climate protection targets in transport (95 to 98 million metric tons of CO₂ equivalents by 2030), there is thus a gap of at least 60 million metric tons of CO₂ equivalents in purely mathematical terms."

Source and more information: Federal Environment Agency - Transport Turnaround for ALL - August 2020

How events can become part of the solution

In principle, the focus of all sustainability measures is on avoiding, reducing and measuring the negative impact. Only then should you sensibly compensate for the unavoidable CO₂ emissions.

Sustainable travel management: avoid, reduce, compensate

Measure and compensate for the negative impact

It is important that you measure your CO₂ balance or that of your events. This is the only way you can constantly document CO₂ emissions and identify potential for improvement. A wide variety of CO₂ calculators are available for this purpose. Alternatively, you can work with a specialized agency. They can perform the calculations for your company or your events and take care of the compensation. ATTENTION: When compensating, make sure that the projects are of high quality and choose the Gold Standard.

CO₂ calculator

You can use these CO₂ calculators, among others:

• UBA CO2 calculator for events
• Klimaaktiv - CO₂ calculator for events
• Emissions calculator for events from myclimate
• Calculation template for events for download from atmosfair

more valuable information about compensate

• Quarks: The benefits of offsetting CO₂ emissions
• Federal Environment Agency: Voluntary CO₂ offsets through climate protection projects
• Business pro climate: Climate compensation
• B.A.U.M. e.V.: Climate and CO₂ compensation offset

Sustainable mobility and travel policies

With mobility management, you ensure that all employees always choose the most sensible and sustainable mobility option. You should make the mobility and travel guidelines available to all employees in writing. You should also appoint a person responsible for mobility management.

There is a sustainable travel policy from VAUDE, for example.

In the project initiated and coordinated by B.A.U.M. e.V. #MobilityPolicy recommendations for sustainability-oriented mobility policies were developed. The recommendations are intended to support you in taking an important step toward sustainable corporate mobility.

To the MobilityPolicy guide

On the B.A.U.M. website you will find further offers and information on sustainable mobility. For example, on the projects:

• LandMobil - Sustainable mobility through corporate mobility management
• mobile wins
• Certification as FAHRRAD-fit company
• ECO Driving Safety Training.

In the "Mobility" category of the B.A.U.M. marketplace, you will find a selection of suppliers with products, services and support to help you on your way to becoming a sustainable company.

B.A.U.M. e.V.-Marketplace

The "Climate Commute Challenge" offered by ACE Auto Club Europa e.V. focuses on a gamification approach. With this, you can motivate your employees to actively look at their own commutes and try out sustainable alternatives.

Travel to work more sustainably

Actively offer your employees benefits if they choose a CO₂-free journey. Other useful incentives can include:

• Service wheels,
• the assumption of the cost of public transport,
• Car sharing,
• Carpooling,
• proprietary solutions for CO₂-free transfers or shuttles with e-buses.

Particularly effective and is a bicycle leasing offer for employees.

Sustainable business travel

Weigh whether you or your employees need to make the business trip at all. Consider what type of meeting makes the most sense. Online meetings have shown that many face-to-face meetings can be saved. At the same time, it has become clear that the value of face-to-face meetings is unmatched and cannot be fully digitized.

Consider rail travel for all travel and avoid short-haul flights in particular. For international flights, give preference to direct flights and opt for economy rather than first- or business-class flights. Meanwhile, there are also airlines that pay attention to sustainability. Choose them preferentially if a flight cannot be avoided.

Sustainable transportation, hotels, restaurants and service providers

Locally, you should prefer public transport and environmental cabs, e-vehicles.

You should also look for sustainability and climate neutrality in hotels and local service providers. Certificates and labels give you an orientation.

Keep your own fleet only if absolutely necessary

You should only maintain an in-house vehicle fleet if this is absolutely necessary. You should keep the vehicles ready in the pool. This allows you to have a certain variety of vehicles that are adapted for the respective driving purpose.

Incidentally, the fleet also includes bicycles, pedelecs, cargo bikes, microcars and motor vehicles with state-of-the-art engines to keep CO₂ emissions as low as possible.

It is best to convert your fleet to pure e-vehicles. You can reduce the costs of your fleet by relying on car sharing vehicles.

Sustainable communication

A sustainable supply chain is becoming increasingly important for customers and suppliers. To enable these companies to make a decision, your sustainability strategy and sustainable mobility strategy should be publicly available.

Therefore, sustainable communication and the transparent publication of your own sustainability strategy internally and externally makes a lot of sense. In this way, you inform all stakeholders and encourage them to behave sustainably as well. Another plus point: You will be found by companies looking for sustainable partners.

About the initiative 16 Steps towards climate neutrality of the event industry by 2025

More about the initiative "16 Steps to 2025 - For a climate-neutral event industry" and the complete press release can be found at pressebox.de

> to the official press release - step 2

> to all press releases of Stefan Lohmann

> 16 Steps to 2025 - For a climate-neutral event industry

Get the practice guide

The Rider can be a useful support for you. On the one hand, you can keep an eye on the most important fields of action, and on the other hand, you can talk to your suppliers to understand what measures they have already taken.