Flight Shaming
The word ‘flygskam’ is a recent Swedish neologism. It’s made up of two words: ‘flyg’ which means ‘flight’ and ‘skam’ which means ‘shame’. It encapsulates the feeling of guilt, or shame, which can come from knowing the environmental impact of travelling by plane. And flygskam is now becoming a global movement, with people pledging to fly less and opting to travel by train instead of plane. It’s a movement built out of individuals feeling guilt for their own personal contributions to the climate crisis.
Prioritizing sustainability decisions is becoming increasingly important for businesses and individuals. Not only is ATG doing its part through paperless processes, a greatly reduced commuting environment, and a robust virtual workplace, ATG offers critical and timely data to help businesses review and create policy decisions based on their own travel CO2 footprint. Business travel is an essential tool for today’s commerce, and traveling across the country and the globe are required for businesses to be successful. While necessary, this travel does contribute to CO2 output.
Society is becoming more aware of our individual and corporate impact on the environment, and that our combined movement towards a sustainable future is critical. Sustainability initiatives for business travel are becoming more important for many companies: 62% of executives consider a sustainability strategy necessary to be competitive today, and another 22% think it will be in the future. As businesses increasingly prioritize sustainability as an essential part of their travel policies, ATG can provide the necessary data for informed policy decisions. With a focus on corporate responsibility, CO2 output for travel booked via ATG, is a reportable factor.
ATG offers proprietary reporting that measures the environmental impact of business travel. Beyond just measuring the total CO2 footprint of travel, ATG assists in establishing goals for our corporate clients that help drive sustainability decisions. Available actions include preferential direction for suppliers that promote sustainable behaviors, calculating CO2 emissions per trip and its cost per mile, and encouraging traveling employees to book ‘greener’ options.