Environmental benefits

Benefits extend beyond financial savings and improved employee productivity. By eliminating air pollution associated with travel, videoconferencing can also help reduce contributions to global warming and local air pollution.

A single round-trip flight from Los Angeles to New York City, for example, generates around 1,700 pounds of global warming pollution per person. A similar amount of global warming pollution is generated by driving a government fleet vehicle once a week for a 30-mile round trip to a meeting. Avoiding the travel enables governments to reduce their global warming footprint.

HP, for example, estimates it can eliminate more than 20,000 trips a year for internal business by using its videoconferencing and telepresence equipment. Avoiding those trips will save millions of dollars and avoid approximately 35,000 metric tons of global warming emissions, the equivalent of the annual electricity usage of 4,700 homes or taking 6,500 passenger cars off the road for a year.

Key questions to ask

When developing specifications for videoconferencing systems, it is important to understand how an agency or department is likely to use the system. According to Steve Monsey in Seattle, the key questions to ask are:

• Does the office really need the equipment? While videoconferencing is an incredibly powerful business tool, sometimes a telephone conference call can suffice. More sophisticated solutions — ranging from desktop computer-based videoconferencing to full-fledged telepresence systems — should be reserved as replacements for situations that would otherwise require a face-to-face meeting.

• How frequently will the equipment be used? The payback on any system depends on its use. Fancier, and more expensive, equipment is not worth the investment unless it will be used regularly.

• How will the equipment be used? Different equipment is needed to join multiple remote offices together for weekly meetings versus to allow occasional one-on-one discussions.

• How important is sharing documents? Brainstorming meetings, in which multiple individuals will be diagramming possible solutions to a challenge, require more sophisticated communications equipment than a routine staff meeting in which an agenda can be distributed via e-mail beforehand.

Additional environmental considerations

While videoconferencing technology can significantly reduce adverse environmental impacts of travel, there are additional environmental considerations.

Seattle officials and others recommend seeking equipment that is certified to meet the European Union's Reduction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) directive, which prohibits or restricts six hazardous materials typically found in electronic products.

In addition, it is important to seek information on the actual energy use of the products. The monitors and computers used in videoconferencing systems should be able to provide independent proof of meeting the U.S. federal government's ENERGY STAR^® standard.

Finally, vendors should offer an equipment take-back program that guarantees all electronic products will be properly recycled at the end of their useful life in a process meeting U.S. EPA's Plug-In To eCycling: Guidelines for Materials Management.

Challenges

According to several information technology (IT) purchasing managers, the biggest challenge to greater use of videoconferencing is that some people are still reluctant to use it. "Some people are more self-conscious on camera than they are in person," explains Monsey.

The bigger challenge, however, is that people are unsure who has access to the technology and so they are less likely to propose using it.

The current global financial difficulties might be the key driver in its rapid expansion as more and more government agencies and private-sector companies invest in videoconferencing equipment and services to further reduce travel costs and improve employee productivity.

About the author

Scot Case has been researching and promoting responsible purchasing issues for 16 years. He is vice president of TerraChoice Environmental Marketing, which manages the EcoLogo program. Contact him via e-mail at scase@terrachoice.com or in Reading, Pa., at 610-779-3770.