Travel

Business air travel accounted for over 35% of our total carbon footprint in 2011 - at about 98,500 tonnes of CO₂. This makes it the second largest contributor to our carbon footprint.

Business air travel is a necessary part of the way we work. Much of what we do as a business is face-to-face and international nature. These personal relationships, especially with clients, are important to our success. However, we recognise that extensive air travel has an undeniable impact on the environment and may affect the well-being of our people. Striking the right balance as our business grows is important but challenging.

We aim to reduce non-essential flights - especially between our own offices - by encouraging both internal and client-facing teams to make better use of videoconferencing and other collaboration tools.

Videoconferencing:
In 2009, we launched WPP Connect, an umbrella program that aims to promote the use of videoconferencing (VC) across the Group. At the end of 2011, the program supported over 400 VC units in over 50 major cities around the world. WPP Connect supports our operating companies by providing:

• 75 shared high-definition VC facilities that can be used by any WPP company;
• A shared VC infrastructure currently supporting over 325 VC facilities exclusive to our operating companies;
• Conference production services to assist operating companies with the production of complex and/or critical videoconferencing calls involving multiple systems, users and content types.

For a full summary of our progress in this area, read our latest Sustainability Report. The table below provides key performance data on our air travel emissions since 2007:

WPP's carbon emissions from air travel

	2007	2008	2009	2010	2011
Tonnes ofCO2	92,269	89,500	76,073	85,848	98,482
Tonnes of CO2 per person	1.02	0.94	0.77	0.82	0.87