A big title. Communications and the Carbon footprint. The obvious thing is that a phone call will reduce you car/flight journey. Yes it is obvious, but why do so many business meeting happen face to face.
We all have had problems with email. They cannot express tone, sarcasm or irony. We have sent a joke and it has been deemed as an insult. Placing :) at the end of it may not quite swing it. So we make a phone call. The modern age lets us work from home whilst billing the company for the phone calls, broadband and even the gas to power the central heating.

You can now do business phone calls in your dressing gown. The face to face meetings still happen because people are aware of just that fact. You want to be able to see peoples eyes, to see there reaction. Are they actually paying attention or are they reading emails, drinking coffee or ordering their groceries whilst you are talking to them.

Video conferencing at home is still in the realms of science fiction. Well no it isn't, as with most things in technology we bring into business what we have at home. Wireless networking is a domestic product which found its way to work. Mobiles with cameras on, they magically appeared in the work place and in some instances are useful.

MSN and Skype put video messaging down the web. All you needed was a webcam, a microphone and a speaker, then the teenagers of the world were talking and seeing each other whilst the grown ups were watching strictly come dancing. The same thing is available in the office, which means it is available at home.

Now you can see your colleague(s). The are now cleanly shaven and wearing a shirt, not a dressing gown, and are now working from home. The weekly meeting does not have to take all afternoon, cost a fortune in fuel, wasted time and parking costs. You can now have 16 people on the same laptop screen from all over the region/country/world. If you want to see a presentation then this is shown on a webmeeting.

Would this reduce your companies carbon footprint- yes, will this save the world, no, not on its own, but it will make a start.


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