BTN Group’s 2023 Sustainable Travel Program Finalist
CASE STUDY: TAKEDA PHARMACEUTICALS
Pharmaceutical company Takeda started on its sustainability journey in the 1970s. The travel department, however, began to look more seriously at ways to contribute to the larger company goals around three years ago, Takeda global head of meetings and travel center of excellence Michelle DeCosta told BTN.
“We saw Takeda’s overall goals, so we started to build our strategies and our plans,” DeCosta said. “We knew that there was an opportunity, [and] the areas we manage—travel, meetings and events, fleet—are very visible to the employees.”
One strategy was to invest in sustainable aviation fuel in 2021, with both United Airlines and Delta Air Lines, two of the pharma company’s preferred carriers. Initiated by the travel department, Takeda was the first pharmaceutical company to make a SAF investment.
The United purchase was part of the carrier’s Eco-Skies Alliance, which allows corporate customers to help purchase SAF for the airline. Takeda has a similar arrangement with Delta. The pharma company, which globally has about 26,000 travelers, purchased SAF toward its travel on key routes.
DeCosta understood Takeda would be making key sustainability investments, but she also knew the travel team couldn’t make it happen alone. She reached out to Takeda’s environmental, health and safety group to present the idea and found synergies between the teams and their reporting structures, which worked well together. By aligning travel to contribute to existing environmental strategies, Takeda funded the SAF investments through money set aside for EHS innovation projects.
As a first mover in the space, the initiative attracted the attention of other industry executives; so much so, it stirred notice at the highest levels at Takeda.
“[Our CEO] was really supportive. We had a call with his team earlier this year to talk about what other investments we could make from a sustainable travel perspective,” DeCosta said. “So the door is open to conversation with him, which is really incredible.”
Bringing Sustainability to Individuals
Driving sustainable travel initiatives still poses challenges. One of the big ones, DeCosta said, was to “overcome the lack of awareness among our traveler base, especially those in the United States,” that they can personally make a difference with their own travel choices. Even though Takeda employees believed the company had a “keen interest” in sustainability, and had seen that with moves like the SAF investments, they didn’t feel as individuals they could have an effect with their travel or meeting choices.
DeCosta’s travel center of excellence aimed to change that perception. In the past 15 months the department has worked again with EHS, as well as with procurement, legal and the data, digital and technology department to take a variety of actions that bring day-to-day sustainability awareness and action to individual employees.
Real-World Emissions Insights
Takeda is using its travel technology platforms to drive home the concept of personal impact on emissions reduction and is putting the information in a tangible context for travelers. For a couple of years, Takeda has used the Emburse Go app, internally branded MyTravel. In addition to itinerary management and real-time alerts, the app gives travelers their carbon footprint metrics broken down by flights, hotels and car rentals.
Instead of a raw number, the app gives equivalents for the carbon consumption of each trip. It will show that a trip “could have powered seven houses for four days,” DeCosta gave as an example.
In November 2022, Takeda implemented Tripkicks in Concur Travel to take that education a step further. Instead of reporting on what a traveler chose in the past, Tripkicks communicates emissions on trip selection in real time at the point of booking. For now, the tool focuses on air and rail travel, denoting the most eco-friendly flights based on the route and the aircraft scheduled to fly. For certain routes, Tripkicks will throw up a recommendation to switch a flight search to a rail search to save on emissions. Takeda has both Amtrak in the U.S. and European rail providers embedded in the Concur tool.
“Definitely in Europe, the opportunity is there,” DeCosta said, but also cited the New York-Boston route as a U.S. opportunity. Regardless of location or whether a traveler has a viable rail option, the Tripkicks overlay in Concur “helps you to make a more eco-friendly choice,” DeCosta said.
Takeda wants to bring similar sustainability information into the decision-making process for hotel and car rental—and Tripkicks plans support that soon. Takeda is also looking for a tech partner to help plan more sustainable meetings. “Not just the big meetings, but also individual team meetings,” said DeCosta.
Going for a Ride
At the end of 2021, DeCosta implemented a self-designed “green rebates” deal with Uber for Business, wherein Takeda’s rebates earned through its Uber for Business partnership are used to offset the carbon emitted by Takeda rides, rather than bringing that money back to the company. “We are working on renewing it for next year,” said DeCosta, who added that Takeda was also looking to optimize the type of offsets it funds.
The benefits of that program are getting multiplied by a new program the company introduced this year. Takeda replaced its inter-campus shuttles with free on-demand Uber rides. “It’s a really new program done in partnership between travel and the U.S. facilities team,” DeCosta said. Employees request rides through Uber, which are put on a central bill. “It makes it really easy for them,” said DeCosta, and simultaneously contributes to the overall green rebates plan.
Guiding Decision-Making
As part of the effort to bring sustainability into more individual action items, DeCosta’s team launched TravelSmarter, a campaign that asks employees to consider three pillars before booking travel: employee well-being, planet impact and cost. It distills key elements of Takeda’s travel policy and highlights sustainable choices, such as the lower carbon impact of taking fewer trips and understanding the emissions savings of selecting rail and tram options where available.
The campaign came about after a CFO of one Takeda business unit said travel was picking up and they could use help in controlling costs.
“We took it a step further,” DeCosta said. “Saving money is nice, but let’s talk about personal well-being and the planet impact, so we added sustainability and well-being. They loved it, so we published this to the CFOs of each business unit, and they sent it out. It was really well-received.”
In addition, DeCosta created and shared with travelers her personal sustainable travel policy that focuses on the choices she makes to reduce her carbon footprint. The goal was to encourage Takeda travelers to do the same. It includes such actions as taking public transport, choosing eco-friendly hotels, bringing a reusable water bottle, conserving water and energy, eliminating one-day trips, and determining if a virtual meeting will achieve the same outcome as an in-person one.
The travel team does not keep metrics on its individual sustainability efforts, but Takeda publishes overall progress in an annual report. An internal dashboard is available for employees to track progress across key environmental targets, including GHG emissions performance and reductions. Takeda’s EHS team produces the emissions calculations for travel, and any emissions not compensated by Takeda’s SAF purchasing are offset through investments in carbon sequestration and removal projects.
In the day-to-day picture, however, the travel team has brought eco-awareness into the culture of travel at Takeda. “We put the information in front of [travelers] to help them make a better, more informed choice,” DeCosta said. Traveler feedback has affirmed their initiatives.
“Travelers have been really happy to see they were offered the information at the point of sale. They especially like the part that gives them their carbon footprint,” she said. It’s up to each individual to take action.
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