Green Business Travel

Image: JLP/Sylvia Torres/CORBIS

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The environmental protesters who camped out near London’s Heathrow Airport last week and demonstrated noisily over the weekend had what most business travelers consider a radical agenda: A long-term reduction in flights to offset the carbon footprint of the world’s airlines.

I think my green credentials are pretty good; the perennially threatened Hudson River is literally at the edge of my backyard, so I have an up close and personal view of how humans mistreat nature. But I’ve never thought much about frequent travel and the environment. As much as I condemn their business practices and financial models, I’ve never thought of airlines as big, bad polluters. Nor have I paid much attention to my own actions on the road and how they might affect the environment.

But I think I get it now. We might want to continue to fly globally, but there’s no reason not to act locally to reduce business travel’s impact on the planet.

I’m going to leave the metaphoric elephant in the room—airlines’ carbon emissions—to the experts for now. But here are some small steps we can all take to become greener business travelers.

Soft Goods, Hard Impact
Partially for environmental reasons and partially because it reduces their overhead costs, hotels around the world have instituted in-room conservation efforts. They want you to use your bathroom towels more than once, and they would be thrilled if you took a pass on the daily change of bed linens.

“In the 30,000 hotels in the United States, there are more than 2 billion sheets washed every year and almost the same number of towels,” says luxury-hotel consultant Michael Matthews. “And 99 percent of the water used to do all that washing doesn’t get recycled.”

I’m like most business travelers. I think there’s something sybaritic about getting crisp new linens each day and having towels changed after every shower. But this sort of profligate use of soft goods is nothing short of ecological suicide. We don’t do it at home, so why do on the road?

There is an easy fix. If your hotel has an in-room conservation program—usually explained on a tent card or placard asking you to place your towels back on the towel bars if you’re willing to reuse them—make sure you play along. If the hotel doesn’t, call the front desk and tell them that you don’t need a daily change of your bed linens and will happily reuse your towels during your stay.

Lights Out, Please
Almost 20 years ago in Tokyo, I stayed in a hotel with a then-revolutionary in-room lighting system. When you entered your room, you placed your door’s card key into a master electrical switch. That activated the lights and power outlets in the room. When you left your room, you removed your card key from the master switch. That shut everything off, saving massive amounts of energy while you were gone.

I’ve never understood why this simple and effective system hasn’t become a worldwide standard, especially since hoteliers always complain about guests who leave the lights on. But just because hotels aren’t smart enough to deploy devices to save energy and cut their operating costs doesn’t mean we should continue to be oblivious. Your parents used to nag you about wasting electricity, right? When you leave your guest room, turn out the lights. It’s an easy and painless way to reduce our carbon footprint on the road. And your parents would be proud.…

Fly Fewer Food Miles
Even if we don’t want to fly fewer miles in search of the next big deal, maybe we can log fewer “food miles.” For gastronomic reasons, I’ve always been a big fan of eating locally, but there’s also a compelling environmental reason to consume what’s native to wherever you’re working. When in Rome, do as the Romans do: Order Panna or San Pellegrino for the table. Why drink Evian in Maine when Poland Springs will do just fine? Won’t your dinner in Tokyo be just as tasty if you skip the ceremonial snifter of Armagnac flown in from France? And maybe you should eat your New Zealand lamb when you’re entertaining in Auckland, not dining in Athens.

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