The Swiss Re insurance group has 14,000 employees scattered around the world and if any of them want to fly somewhere for work this year, they will need to have a good reason.
Everyone’s emissions are being monitored and very frequent flyers need to be on guard. “If one employee were to travel like mad then we would spot that,” Reto Schnarwiler, Swiss Re’s head of group sustainability, told me. Also, there would probably be “a discussion with that individual”. “For example, if they are booking a flight which is returning on the same day, we start to nudge them to turn the meeting into a Teams [online] meeting rather than a physical one,” said Steve Varley, EY’s global vice chair for sustainability. Or take the train instead.I discovered all this by calling some of the companies listed on a ranking put out this month by green transport campaigners who analysed the air travel plans of 230 US and European businesses.
with video conferencing, why is there ever a need to travel for conferences? all the contradiction about adaptation to new norms during the pandemic and investment in technology is a joke. E.g. Shangri-la dialogue belongs to the 20th Century.