Making business travel greener saves money and boosts corporate reputations. Paul Tilstone, chief executive of the Institute of Travel Management, offers these 10 tips for companies and directors

• Reduce travel by using video, tele or Web conferencing.

• If you're unable to cut travel, shift to a less polluting form. Take the train instead of the plane, for example.

• Where you must hire a car, choose a high-mileage, low-emission vehicle.

• Offset what you cannot reduce or change.

• Choose a form of measuring CO2 output. Don't worry too much about the sophistication of this measurement because what you should be gauging is the reduction from year to year rather than the total CO2 output. As long as you're using a consistent measure you will be able to quantify reduction.

• Concentrate on the largest emitting areas and identify whether you're likely to be able to change traveller behaviour here.

• Hotels are responsible for the second-largest area of CO2 expenditure. Choose yours wisely. Look on its website to find out about its green policies.

• Target individuals who are most likely to change behaviour. Seek voluntary buy-in to start with, and then move to those that are teetering and, finally, those that are resisting any change.

• The biggest thing any individual can do is challenge their own behaviour and what we call the "let's meet mentality". You have to think whether you really need to sit face-to-face with that person. It's habit. There isn't actually a process where we ask whether we can achieve the same results by teleconference, Web calling, email or videoconference.

• The greatest thing any director can do is challenge their own behaviour, so they understand what's possible in their organisation. Any sort of personal leadership would make a dramatic difference.