Green Workday Initiative Aims to Reduce Corporate Travel and Carbon Emissions by 20 Percent

The goal of the new campaign is to advance the use of desktop videoconferencing and collaboration tools to reduce the need for business travel. Launched by Avistar Communications Corp., the campaign’s mission is for every individual and organization that joins Green Workday to reduce their carbon emissions by 20 percent as part of the Green Workday initiative by substituting business related travel with “video-commuting” one day per week.

“People and corporations are increasingly aware of the high costs of business-related travel, in terms of money, time, productivity and environmental impact,” commented Stephen Epstein, chief marketing officer at Avistar. “Organizations have documented significant reductions in travel and commutation with widespread and continuous access to desktop videoconferencing and collaboration tools.”

He said if Green Workday achieves its mission of having 1 percent of the office worker population working from home 1 day per week, each year, more than $500 million in fuel costs will be saved in the United States alone, in addition to saving days of travel time and reducing considerable levels of destructive carbon from the atmosphere.

Through Green Workday, Avistar is launching the 10 Seat Green Work Day Promotional Package, which is powered by Avistar’s C3 videoconferencing and collaboration software. Organizations can install these at their offices, in workers’ homes or at their clients’ sites –“wherever they think best in order to save on travel without losing face-to-face contact that’s so important for effective business interaction in addition to improving work-life balance,” said Epstein.

Avistar is the initial sponsor for Green Workday and is offering its C3 desktop videoconferencing software for up to 10 users as part of a promotional package for a period of 1 year. Additional technology sponsors are signing up to the campaign in order to extend the range of incentives used to facilitate or support videoconferencing and collaboration in helping achieve the Green Workday mission.

Incentives from additional technology sponsors will be added to Green Workday from time to time. These will be announced on the Green Workday Web site, and organizations wishing to learn more or sign up to Green Workday can do so by visiting http://www.greenworkday.org.