ITM APPROVES ICARUS ACCREDITATION FOR BT
Communications Technology Giant Drives Emissions from Business Travel Programme
The Institute of Travel & Meetings (ITM) announced today that it has issued Bronze ICARUS accreditation status to BT for commitment, measurement and targeted reduction of emissions from its business travel and meetings programme. The judges, members of the ICARUS Advisory Board, cited BT as having made great use of conferencing and collaboration tools to reduce the need for employees to travel.
Their accreditation brings the total number of Bronze level companies to five, joining existing ICARUS accredited companies SAS UK & Ireland, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Accenture and Barclays, just as the project starts to take on a wider European scope to attract the interest of companies outside of the UK.
Speaking on behalf of Project ICARUS, Mark Avery, Chairman of the project, praised the BT team for demonstrating that big business can target travel emissions and for "walking the talk". He stated, "It's easy to say that BT should be focusing its efforts on encouraging people to fly less and use alternative means because that's the role of their communications products, but it is a big business just like any other and needs to work face-to-face with its customers too. The fact that it is encouraging its employees to make informed decisions about their travel plans and help reduce emissions by using conference calls instead shows that it is genuinely committed to working smarter, a BT ethic operated across its work-force in general."
Gabrielle Giner from the Sustainability team at BT commented on the award notice by saying, "This is fantastic news. We have been recognised at broad industry level for our ambitious, thorough and international approach to tackling environment and climate change issues, but to have our travel and meetings emission reduction strategy approved by specific industry experts is very important to us."
