Conference Matters 142

Major obstacles Professor De Bruin also has some tips. “In the 1990s, you could buy a ticket to Croatia at the ticket office in Almelo. Today, you can’t do that because there’s no website to book this in one go. I’m familiar with all the sites, and none of them work properly. They’re such depressing rubbish that oozes incompetence and lack of enthu siasm, transfer problems aren’t taken into account, etc. Without prior knowledge, it will take you hours. The second issue is the cost, which can be ten times higher. And then there’s the connection. On the way to Hamburg, there’s a piece of track missing somewhere, and on a stretch to Austria, the train has to go very slowly. Once I arrived in Munich, I was about two hours late, and my connection to Italy had left. Those kinds of serious obstacles immediately chase business travellers back onto planes.

“As an organisation that has high mobility and takes its social responsibility very seriously, PwC has been working for years on how things can be done differently,” says Maarten Dansen, Corporate Sustainability Manager. “Since 2018, we’ve restricted our flight policy. We investigate alternatives and sign external partnerships to take joint steps. PwC is affiliated with the Coalitie Anders Reizen and chairs the Anders Vliegen committee. Mobility represents about 90 percent of our emissions. And since PwC has clients around the world, client contact is important to us. We figure out what they really need: which trips are necessary, can they meet with fewer people, is the train an option, if not, is there a direct flight, and so on. And when we opt for flying, we try to do so with 100 percent sustainable aviation fuel and fully offset our CO2 emissions. PwC has developed a tool that helps every employee monitor their environmental impact of travelling, which we also use for projects. Drawing up a plan in advance shows exactly how often we have to visit a client, what this means in terms of CO2 emissions, how many euros it costs, and how much time is involved. Based on this, we look together to see how we can work together more efficiently. Our efforts have led to a 51 percent reduction in the environmental impact of flying while maintaining good client contact. Since 2015, the number of international train kilometres has tripled, and we expect this number to increase in the coming years.PwC has made train travel mandatory for some destinations and always questions whether travelling is actually requi red. For our events, we look for locations that are easily accessible by train. Within Coalitie Anders Reizen, rather than only within PwC, it’s important that we talk with train operators. How can we make sure that there are more trains earlier and later in the day and that last-minute tickets are easy to book? Every year, we look at what else could be done by continuously monitoring and improving.” The number of international train kilometres has already tripled' Maarten Dansen, Corporate Sustainability Manager at PwC

'They're such depressing rubbish that oozes incompetence

and lack of enthusiasm'

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