More Companies Weighing Environmental Cost of Travel

When a jet flies round-trip from Los Angeles to New York, it leaves behind an estimated 1,600 pounds of carbon dioxide in the skies -- and that’s per passenger.

And for business travelers, the numbers add up.

Consider electronics giant Hewlett-Packard Co. It figures its business travel activities generated an estimated 279,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions in 2005.

Carbon dioxide is the nation’s most common type of greenhouse gas, and transportation is the largest contributor, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Greenhouse gases are considered a major contributor to global warming.

Increasingly, corporations are finding that their bottom lines can be helped by efforts to reduce their business’ effect on the environment. And it’s not just about recycling and cutting electricity usage.

Business travel is getting a once-over for its effect on the environment, and corporations are taking action, with some companies cutting back on travel and hotels changing sheets and towels only occasionally during a guest’s stay.

“It’s a grass-roots movement,” said Jack Riepe, spokesman for the Assn. of Corporate Travel Executives.

The nonprofit group with more than 2,500 members worldwide is seeing a bottom-up growth in interest in the subject, Riepe said. It sponsored a seminar on environmentally responsible purchasing at its conference last month in Atlanta.

The primary focus for many companies is the amount of carbon dioxide their travelers generate.

For example, it was London-based Carbon Neutral Co. that made the estimate of what the round trip between Los Angeles and New York cost environmentally. The firm has a website on which one can calculate a company’s production of carbon dioxide.

Just being aware that business travel has an effect on the environment is a start, said Jim Peacock, spokesman for Carbon Neutral. The for-profit firm advises companies on strategies for reducing their carbon emissions.

When that is not feasible, it helps find projects that can offset those emissions. And unlike the tree-hugger environmentalist image, that doesn’t necessarily mean just planting some trees to help absorb carbon dioxide.

“It’s less about trees and more about investing in renewable energy and energy-efficient projects in developing countries that will save the equal amount” of carbon dioxide, Peacock said.

Europe is ahead of the game when it comes to attention to business travel’s effect on the environment, he said, but that is changing.

The corporate travel executives association and Carbon Neutral have teamed to offer an online “carbon calculator” to measure the carbon dioxide emissions from companies’ air and ground transportation.

A chart with the calculator shows the average carbon dioxide emissions of different types of transportation.

Not surprisingly, when you look at vehicle emissions per passenger, the most come from gasoline-powered cars; the least polluting are trains. The second-most environmentally friendly way to travel is in a gasoline-electric hybrid car. Load three people into a hybrid, and it becomes the most environmentally friendly.

Hybrid vehicles have become something of a poster child for the environmental movement.

Hewlett-Packard has added Ford Escape hybrids to its fleet of corporate vehicles in an effort to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions.

EV Rentals specializes in renting environmentally friendly vehicles. It was founded 10 years ago with 11 electric cars at Los Angeles International Airport, and it now has 400 hybrid vehicles and ambitions to add another 400 by the end of the year.

It rents its hybrids through Fox Rent a Car at eight locations in the Western U.S. including LAX, San Diego, San Jose, Oakland and Las Vegas. About 25% of its customers are business travelers, company President Jim Demb said.

With gasoline prices near record highs, he expects continued demand for those fuel-efficient vehicles.

“People now see the hybrid not just as some kind of fluke but rather a practical solution for personal and business use,” he said.

Rental car companies aren’t the only ones capitalizing on the popularity of hybrids. Chauffeured car services in Los Angeles (Eco Limo, www.eco-limo.com), San Francisco (Green Car Limo, www.greencarlimo.com), New York (Ozocar, www.ozocar.com) and Boston (PlanetTran, www.planettran.com) are shunning the ubiquitous black Lincoln Town Car in favor of hybrids.

Hotels too are getting on the green bandwagon. Over the last 10 years, Green Hotels Assn. in Houston has distributed thousands of cards urging guests to reuse their bedding and towels. It says that more than 70% of guests participate and that it leads to a 5% reduction in utility costs.

For meeting planners, it offers a two-page questionnaire to put a hotel’s commitment to the environment to the test. Among the 46 questions are, “Will your property use chips or coins rather than disposable paper tickets for coat checking and auto parking?” and “Will your property use cream pitchers, sugar pourers and washable spoons rather than individual creamer and sugar packets, etc. for our meeting?”

Nobody ever said it was easy being green.

James Gilden can be reached at james.gilden@latimes.com.