When it comes to super-polluting jet travel, most top companies have dirt on their faces

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Are you a big-shot businessperson? Then chances are you that you bathe in a fountain of frequent flyer miles or maybe even zoom around in a private jet. And in doing so, you are seriously polluting the planet.

But do these honchos’ employers — who often tout their green credentials — doing anything about it? Very few.

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That’s according to the latest edition of the Travel Smart Ranking, which is put out by Belgium-based Transport & Environment (T&E), a non-profit that promotes clean transport across Europe.

In the report, only 17% of 328 global companies analyzed by T&E have valid plans to reduce emissions from airplane travel. Meanwhile, the remaining 271 firms are not being serious enough about the climate impact of their business jaunts, the group says.

There are some big names among the culprits (and the heroes):

“Among the top flyers without targets are consulting giants KPMG and Accenture,” the report says. “On the other hand, peers EY, PwC and Deloitte are much more ambitious, with plans to reduce what is often regarded as ‘the low hanging fruit’ of a company’s climate footprint.”

According to the survey, other top flyers in the ranking with no credible plans to cut down travel emissions include Siemens, Merck, Volkswagen, Johnson & Johnson and Google. Meanwhile, the analysis shows that if flyers from the top 25 companies cut their business flying in half, it would achieve a third of the emissions reductions needed by 2025 from the 328 firms in the ranking, the equivalent of the emissions produced by 3 million cars in a year.

Denise Auclair, corporate travel manager at T&E, is blunt in her criticism. “Top flyers have an outsized responsibility to cut down their flying,” she said in a statement. “There are no excuses for not taking action. Peers in their sector have set ambitious targets, so what is stopping laggards like KPMG and Accenture from doing the same?”

Exactly.