The Impacts of 'Being There'

Everyone talks about the environmental benefits of teleconferencing over traveling to meetings by planes, train, and automobiles -- but until recently, no one knew exactly what that meant.

Now, we’ve got some hard data, as I report in the September issue of The Green Business Letter.

Writing in a recent issue of the American Chemical Society’s journal, Environmental Science & Technology, Michael Toffel and Arvad Horvath -- professors in the University of California at Berkeley’s business school and department of civil and environmental engineering, respectively -- offer research findings that back up what most of us understood only intuitively: long-distance calls aren’t merely “the next best thing to being there,” as those old Bell System ads used to say, they’re orders of magnitude better for the environment.

So, where does that leave the typical road warrior? For starters, needing an increasingly better reason to rack up all those air miles and days away from the office.

Also in this month's issue: We focus, once again, on water -- specifically, on the business risks associated with the world’s apparently teetering water supply. Several new studies and news headlines have brought to the fore that water is becoming a source of business risk -- and competitive advantage -- much like pollution prevention, waste minimization, climate change, and energy efficiency. We report on the latest findings.

Also: Researchers are finding that the profusion of eco-labels related to food products may be hard for many consumers to digest. And several new studies report on climate change risks for business and the potential for clean technology to create jobs, among other things.