We can try not to think about it, but we all know it. We should all do our part to be more environmentally friendly, both at home and at work. More and more companies are introducing policies to reduce their carbon footprint, encouraging staff to print less, to switch off all electronic equipment and lighting when not in use, to reduce single-use plastic in canteens and cafeterias. For many businesses, the one thing that is harder to reduce is travelling. Travelling accounts for 8% of the global carbon footprint, but for many managers, the habit of discussing business face to face is hard to give up. If some business transactions can only be concluded in person, what can certainly be avoided is that people other than the ones that need to do the final handshake join the meeting. I am talking about interpreters. Interpreters are key figures in meetings, but they do not necessarily need to be in the room to do their job. Today there is a greener way to benefit from their services: remote interpretation.
Remote interpretation is the solution that ensures high-quality interpretation without the need to make your interpreters travel to your meeting venue. Since it works with only a laptop and the tablets or smartphones of the people in the room, it also makes sending interpretation equipment unnecessary. This represents an additional saving in terms of carbon emissions, not to mention in terms of money.
Remote interpretation for meetings in remote areas
One might think that the contribution of two interpreters’ travel to pollution is negligible. This can be true if you are thinking of meetings taking place in big cities, where the availability of interpreters is high and they just need to take a taxi or the subway to reach your building (by the way, this still counts as travelling and has its emissions, even if small ones). But when your meeting takes place, let’s say, in Inari, Lapland, you might realise that finding interpreters already located in that area is much more difficult. You might therefore need to fly them in from Helsinki to Ivalo, and then hire a pick-up truck able to drive in the snow to get them to Inari. Let’s do a little calculation with one of the many CO2 calculators available online. For a round-trip flight Helsinki-Ivalo, each passenger is responsible for 408 kg of CO2. For two interpreters, it is 816 kg. This is equal to the average amount of CO2 emitted by one person in Zimbabwe over one year. Your meeting was 3 hours long.
So, how about you start using remote interpretation instead? And if managers get persuaded to do business in video conference too, Rafiky can be integrated with the most popular and highly reliable conferencing solutions, such as Skype for Business, Cisco WebEx, GoToMeeting, Zoom and many others.
Basically, you do not have any more excuses not to reduce travelling. Contact Rafiky, and start using remote interpretation now.