Travelling by road, rail and air has a significant environmental impact. Petrol, diesel and aviation fuel all release carbon dioxide, which contributes to climate change. Other exhaust emissions contribute to poor local air quality and acid rain.
Our transport use produced around 78,600 tonnes of carbon dioxide, an increase of 17.3% from the previous year, due to an increased number of owned vehicles. This includes emissions from fleet vehicles and company cars. In addition, we estimate that our emissions from air travel were approximately 41,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2007/08.
Business travel
Vodafone has operating companies around the world. Employees across the Group often need to meet with people in different parts of the world. We aim to reduce the impact of our business travel.
Video-conferencing reduces the number of trips made by Vodafone employees and the related environmental impact. We ensure that video-conferencing facilities are readily available, reliable and convenient and run campaigns to raise awareness of these facilities across the Group. All our local operating companies have video-conferencing facilities and we have dedicated video-conferencing booths at our Group headquarters in the UK and other key sites. We also encourage Directors to install video-conferencing facilities in their offices.
The number of video and tele-conferencing facilities installed has more than trebled over the last three years. We estimate that the use of video and tele-conferencing facilities saved 1,449 tonnes of CO2 from business travel in 2007/08.
Our headquarters in Newbury, UK, has a green travel plan to encourage employees to use public transport. Shuttle buses are provided throughout the day to the nearest train station and to different parts of the town. There is a satellite tracking system to provide employees with real-time information about the location of shuttle buses, which can be accessed via text message or a computer.
