How working from home can reduce your carbon footprint
Working from home has now become the new normal for many of us. Admin Made Easy staff are remote workers and when starting out on my journey, working from home was a big driving force for me. Way back when I first had the idea for Admin Made Easy I knew remote working was the way forward, not only because the way we were living was changing but because the climate would need it.
This way of working can have a hugely positive benefit not just to employees but also to the planet we live on. More and more of us are starting to question how we can reduce our carbon footprint and how we can live a better, more environmentally friendly way of life.
Sadly, many benefits of working from home are unnoticed. We may not always see it, but our climate is rapidly changing and not in a good way. In a nutshell, climate change is a huge problem we all face but there is still a lot we can do to help our only home, planet earth.
Taking all of this into consideration as employers it is worth considering how our day to day work routine can be of help
Will working from home reduce your carbon footprint?
Absolutely it will. Technology has many environmental advantages. First of all, it reduces greenhouse gas emissions, also the fossil fuel consumption is reduced, in turn, this reduces air pollution and lastly paper and plastic waste.
This is just for starters. Remote working means:
No daily commute
Because you are already in your place of work there is no commute to work, which means fewer emissions. No one is missing the 7 am 1-hour long drive stuck in traffic to and from work. Not only does this help your stress levels it also has a very significant impact on the environment.
Right now, the transport sector in the UK and the US are responsible for emitting more greenhouse gases than any other Globally transport accounts for around a whopping quarter of CO2 emissions. Worryingly cars, lorries, buses, and motorbikes account for almost three-quarters of the greenhouse gas emissions that come from transport.
Petrol cars alone are responsible for 180g of CO2 every kilometre, while diesel produces 173g of CO2/km and in England, around 60% of 1–2-mile trips are made by car.
With those stats, it is food for thought and might be a good time for us all to make an immediate change by walking for those short journeys, whether that is to school, shopping trips, or commuting to and from work.
Remote working uses less plastic
Picking up the morning coffee on the way to work, using plastic cutlery and plates to eat lunch, plastic cups to use the office water fountain. These convenient perks equal a lot of wasted single-use plastic throughout the day.
In the UK an astonishing 2.5 billion cups of coffee are thrown away each year! Even more disturbing is that less than 1 in 400 of those cups are recycled. And, to make matters worse a staggering 500 thousand cups are littered every single day – this is a tragic waste and disease on our planet.
Remote workers help to go some way to remedy this problem.
How? Well, there is no need to be collecting that morning coffee on the way to work – stick the kettle and make it at home. We can get ourselves a glass of water eliminating the need for those pesky plastic cups. We can make our lunches at home, using our own plates and cutlery, reducing packaging and wrappings to almost nothing at all.
These small changes will not only help protect the environment, but we will also save money too.
Fewer fossil fuels will be used
Working from home has a significant impact on fossil fuel consumption. The effects of fossil fuels on the environment are broad across the globe. Burning fossil fuels releases huge amounts of carbon dioxide into our atmosphere, contributing to both climate change and global warming.
We use fossil fuels in our everyday lives, such as heat, electricity, and transportation. Most of the components for petrol are made up of fossil fuels.
We all know how stressful and frustrating the daily commute to work can be but it is also a serious problem for our environment. Transport produced 27% of the UK’s total emissions in 2019 and of this 91% came from road transport vehicles. In 2020 Americans used about 123 billion gallons of fuel.
It doesn’t take a genius to realise that working from home will have a huge environmental impact from just reducing how often people drive to work.
Many people are now recognising this and choosing to either walk, bike, or take public transport to work, which is great and should be encouraged, however remote working still wins hands down.
Reduction in paper used and wasted
Less paper usage is another huge benefit of remote working and it can have a positive impact on our environment. Reducing our paper usage prevents trees from being chopped down. Another benefit is it will reduce the amount of paper produced, therefore reducing how much is sent to landfill sites.
As there is less need for in-person meetings and virtual ones occur instead, this means we have virtual notes, rather than printouts and online presentations instead of brochures and worksheets.
Less paper use means less need for printers, these use a lot more electricity than computers.
We save on the amount of space needed for paper files when we store our documents digitally. Plus everything you need is at your fingertips meaning no more trawling through mountains of paperwork.
How to make your home office environmentally friendly?
So now you know how working from home reduces your carbon footprint, you may be wondering how you can make your home office space eco-friendly?
It is easier than you think.
Use energy-saving light bulbs
These have been around a long time and most of us use these now, but if you don’t, then now is a great time to make the switch. These types of light bulbs use up to 80% less energy than a traditional light bulb. They have a much longer lifespan than the traditional ones too, with 15000 hours compared to the 1000-hour life span of a regular bulb.
Natural light
Using natural light whilst at home is much better than artificial light so use it, open the blinds, curtains, windows, and doors (weather permitting of course)
You can also use reflective surfaces such as mirrors or white-painted walls to bounce more daylight into your workspace.
Natural light is not only good for the environment, but it is also good for our mental health and has been found to boost productivity reducing that work from home burnout
Choose eco-friendly office equipment where you can
We’ve talked about how using our own cutlery and plates help but we can also make other changes that will have a positive impact on our carbon footprint too.
Invest in eco-friendly office equipment, such as recycled paper, eco-friendly pencils, refillable pens. You could also invest in a green printer, turn off all your equipment when not in use and recycle as much of your paper waste as you can.
You could even consider having your website hosted by a green provider as we have at Admin Made Easy with the Green Web Foundation.
Place plants in your office space
Houseplants are a brilliant way to increase your indoor air quality and they come with the added benefit of looking good too. Try using plants like orchids and succulents as these absorb carbon dioxide to transform into oxygen.
Plants are amazing in their own right; they can promote a peaceful and stress-free workspace.
Plants have also been known to increase creativity and productivity by up to 15%Cn
Conclusion
The pandemic has highlighted many things good and bad for us globally. We have seen how remote working has played a vital role in reducing CO emissions, fossil fuel consumption as well as reducing commute-related expenditure.
With the added benefits of using eco-friendly products to help preserve our natural resources even further it is hard to argue against remote working.
There are some work environments where remote working is not possible. However, for those where it is, we should be taking steps towards creating a better future for us all and actively changing the way we live our lives including the way we work.
Working from home just a few days a week will make a huge positive difference not only on the planet but to us too.
