'Work from home, save the planet', says BT

You may not know it but today is 'World Car Free Day' and BT is marking the occasion by asking as many of its staff as possible to work from home.

Nigel Stagg, CEO at BT Conferencing, said supporting the day shows a wider commitment on the part of his company to reducing business travel for BT staff and reducing the threat of pollution created by unnecessary travel.

"Encouraging our staff to support World Car Free Day represents our commitment to reducing the reliance on business travel and helping the environment," said Stagg.

It could easily be branded a cheap PR stunt, given the implied plug for BT Conferencing's own services, but BT claims its efforts are on-going and says that during 2004 the company prevented the creation of 47,000 tonnes of CO2 by eliminating around 300,000 face-to-face meetings across the whole BT Group.

By doing so BT is also throwing down the gauntlet to other companies to consider how well resourced they are to enable remote working among their workforce.

And it's not just the once-a-year environmental message which is important for businesses to understand. A spokesman from the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC) told silicon.com that BT is among a number of companies in the tech sector who should be praised for their remote working practices.

The EOC spokesman also singled out IBM as a company which is embracing remote working, while adding that, ironically, the tech sector is generally among the worst in terms of enabling teleworking.

Earlier this week the EOC reported that Telewest had been hit with a fine due to its refusal to enable remote working, or other flexible solutions, for a mother of three children.