Scottish business pledges to reduce number of flights taken

Four major companies that operate out of Scotland and one public body from Scotland committed to cutting the amount of flights they take in the next five years by a fifth earlier in the week in an effort to reduce their carbon footprints.

Included in the companies who will participate in what is designated as the WWF’s ‘One in Five Challenge’ are Premiere Global, Marks & Spencer, Vodafone UK, CapGemini, and the Scottish Environment Protection Agency.

The program aims to help companies reduce their carbon emissions by encouraging businesses to reduce their flights by twenty percent by the year 2014.

Dr. Richard Dixon, the WWF’s Scotland Director, said that the organization is excited that the six organizations in Scotland are joining the programme and hope that with this encouragement other Scottish organizations and businesses will consider signing up for the program as well.

Dixon went on to say that for a large amount of companies leave the largest portion of their carbon footprint behind due to flight travel and in some larger businesses flight can be attributed to 50% of their CO2 emissions. Thus, by reducing flights they can reduce CO2 emissions and start on a path towards carbon accountability.

Policy Exchange, a think tank organization, also reported that biofuel research should be focused on flights instead of driving due to the high emissions of planes.

Among its suggestions is that the EU should fund more research projects for plan CO2 emission reduction including a concentration on plant based fuels for flight purposes.