Today in the United States is Earth Day. Founded by US politician Gaylord Nelson in the late 1960s, Earth Day is celebrated in many countries each year on April 22 to promote awareness of critical environmental issues. Recent surveys have shown that video conferencing and other types of teleconferencing are among the most effective methods of reducing a company’s carbon footprint. Today is an important day in the conferencing industry.

As part of an ongoing effort to protect the environment and reduce carbon emissions, WebEx has partnered with Carbonfund.org and has announced a tree planting program. Just sign up for a free trial of the WebEx software, conduct 2 online meetings with at least 2 people each, and WebEx will plant a tree in your name. For every 100 trees that are planted in people’s names, they will plant an additional 100 trees.

WebEx and Carbonfund.org help companies work greener. Together we raise understanding of how business travel impacts the environment—and how to minimize this impact with web conferencing. We also plant trees to help offset existing carbon emissions from travel.

So how much carbon emissions can be saved by replacing teleconferencing with traditional traveling?

• Teleconference instead of flying from New York to London for a team meeting. Save 2,690 pounds of carbon dioxide.
• Enable two salespeople to give a presentation via teleconference rather than traveling from Chicago to Silicon Valley. Save 4,696 pounds of carbon dioxide.
• Train 12 employees using video conferencing instead of flying them to San Francisco from Dallas. Save 22,377 pounds of carbon dioxide.