For a long time, most companies measured their environmental impact by looking at what was right in front of them: how much paper they used in the office, how they recycled hardware, or how often their employees flew to meetings. While those things still matter, they no longer represent the full picture of how a modern business affects the world. As teams travel more frequently for work, with business trips now making up 24.9% of all international travel this summer, the way we keep people connected on the road has become a major part of a company’s overall environmental footprint.
The growing gap between travel ambition and environmental awareness
Our latest Summer 2026 Travel & eSIM Report shows that 63% of travelers now care about the environmental impact of how they stay connected abroad. At the same time, people are traveling further and visiting more places on a single trip, with 46% of all planned journeys crossing international borders and 51% covering multiple destinations. This creates a very simple challenge for any company with employees on the move: we cannot stop people from traveling to grow the business, but we can completely eliminate the unnecessary physical waste and wasted time that usually comes with it.
Removing millions of plastic cards from the global supply chain
The easiest place to start is by getting rid of physical plastic. For decades, international travel meant buying millions of plastic SIM cards, wrapping them in small plastic covers, shipping them in planes across the world, and throwing them in the trash after a few days. Replacing that entire physical process with digital eSIMs means that connectivity is delivered instantly through software over the air, without producing a single piece of plastic or shipping a single parcel. As more companies take control of their employees’ travel connectivity, with company-provided eSIMs growing to 21% of all business trips, businesses are helping to permanently remove single-use plastic from the global telecom market.
Turning better travel logistics into immediate workforce productivity
Beyond removing plastic, managing connectivity centrally makes corporate travel much easier for the people actually doing the work. When employees land in another country and have to hunt for local SIM card shops at the airport, figure out local currencies, or rely on slow and insecure public Wi-Fi networks, they lose valuable hours and run unnecessary security risks. Our research shows that 81% of employees who receive an eSIM directly from their company report a clear increase in their productivity while traveling, compared to just 52% of employees who have to figure out their own connectivity on the go.
Making the practical choice for the future of business mobility
When a company sets up digital connectivity for its team before they even board the plane, travelers arrive ready to work, avoid unnecessary detours across unfamiliar cities to buy local cards, and stay off unencrypted public Wi-Fi networks that put company data at risk. As businesses everywhere face stricter rules about reporting the environmental impact of their entire supply chain, choosing software-based travel connectivity is one of the most straightforward changes a company can make. It removes physical waste, protects corporate data, and makes work travel significantly less painful for everyone involved.
