10 Reasons Why Working From Home Is Reducing Pollution

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One of the hidden benefits working from home has that I discovered a few months in was the massive environmental impact it has on reducing pollution. With carbon dioxide levels massively increasing over the past 100 years due to human interaction, doing our part to help mother nature is more important now more than ever. So how much does working from home reduce the pollution in the air around us? 

Working from home reduces the number of cars on the road, and could save upwards of 54 million tons of greenhouse gasses if all jobs were to be done remotely. Working from home also helps with the reduction in other emissions like noise pollution, fossil fuel consumption and paper and plastic wastage. Working remotely also helps impact human health due do better air quality 

So exactly how much could the change to working from home have on the environment? And what can you do today to make your home office more environmentally friendly? Keep reading to find out more. 

(Now it’s worth mentioning that this post has a lot of information and so if you’re curious about the best equipment needed to work remotely simply go to my resource page here)

Working from home can reduce the pollution  

So I’ve been living in Birmingham near enough my entire life but in the past ten years the amount of pollution and particulates in the atmosphere has increased so much that the city now plans to implement a low emission zone. 

Like many other major global cities pollution is becoming a massive problem and can lead to a reduction in life, leading to as many as 7 million premature deaths per year. 

One of the easiest ways to help reduce the environmental impact is by speeding up the shift to remote working. 

So what are the major environmental benefits that remote working has over working from an office? 

I’ve summarize the main points in the table below

Environment issue	Working from an office	Working from home
Car emissions	Around 1.7 billion metric tons of car emission are caused by people travelling and commuting to the workspace every year.	Working from home could save 54 million tons of car emissions every year
Noise pollution	Noise pollution from working and commuting to offices  impacts around 30% of people	Noise pollution indoors can be reduced by installing simple things like carpets, soundproofing foam or simply keeping doors closed.
Plastic wastage	Only 9% of current plastics are recycled at the moment with a large portion of these coming from office environments	Being in control of your home environment ensures that you can correctly assign and recycle your own items.
Paper wastage	76% of office waste consists of paper and cardboard, the highest number of any item wasted.	Working from home enables organisations to go entirely paperless bringing their paper wastage to net zero.
Energy usage	Most offices consume between 15,000 and 25,000 kwh of energy per year	Home office equipment is relatively low energy using only 390.6 kwh of energy per year

Let’s explore these points and few other key ways in which working from home can help the environment below: 

Car emissions

Easily the biggest saving (and biggest reason why people opt to work remotely) in the environmental impact caused by working from a traditional office is the lack of car emissions caused by a daily commute. 

Emissions caused by the daily commute contribute towards the massive 1.7 billion metric tons of car emissions that enter the atmosphere every year. 

If everyone started working remotely this would help save around 54 million tons of car emissions off the road; the equivalent of taking 10 million cars and HGVs off the road. Globally emissions from commuting and transportation account for around a quarter of CO2 emissions 

What’s really interesting is when you take into account that 76.5% of Americans use a car to get to work and 9.5% carpool and then start adding up the numbers: 

• The average commute takes around around 27 minutes in which Americans drive on average 16 miles per day to and from their jobs 
• The average car emissions emitted in a 30 minute journey averaging around 650g of carbon dioxide per kilometer 
• This adds up to a whopping 16705 grams of carbon dioxide drivers emit daily on their commute

Staggering figures when you add it all up 

Working from home then eliminates these emissions entirely reducing the 16705 grams of CO2 pollution to net zero. 

Whilst car emissions are the biggest factor that commuting can save and help the environment with there are also other polluting and environmental savings to be had. 

Tyre and glass pollution 

Another type of pollution that can be saved from working from home will be the reduction in glass from windows and rubber from tyres that litter the road on the way to work. 

It’s estimated that pollution caused from tyres is around 1000 times worse than that caused by the exhaust of cars – a sobering fact when you consider how bad exhaust fumes are. 

Broken glass is also a nuisance with it potentially causing damage to cyclists and other road users with some schemes now actively in palaces to use this glass to help rebuild roads. 

Working from home eliminates this issue with the majority of people’s journeys taking place on their commute. 

Less of a commute 

Another major benefit that working from home has over working from the office specific to the environment are the time and cost savings caused by the lack of a commute. 

Prior to 2020 the numbers of people commuting to work every year was increasing, doubling by 10 million in the past ten years alone:

 

Remote workers already work around 16.8 days more per year then their office based working counterparts whilst also having better work life balances that they can help contribute towards environmental activities to help their communities around them. 

The exact amount of time saved due to lack of commuting into the office is actually staggering with research from CoPilot showing the following results 

City	Daily percentage of time  gained back from not commuting
New York	15.2%
Los Angeles	12.4%
Chicago	13.1%
Oakland	12.6%
Dallas	10%
Philadelphia	13%

Even if an organisation made their employees commute half the time to their offices, they would save around $11,000 per employee according to global workplace analytics, as well as be seen as an eco friendly organization which has dual benefits. 

Less energy usage 

Whilst we have made huge strides in renewable energy sources and trying to live more energy efficient lives, energy consumption is still a huge issue. 

Working from a traditional office can have a huge impact on energy consumption with even small offices using thousands of kilowatts of energy per year that could be saved by letting their employees work from home. 

To give you an idea businesses typically use the following amounts of energy per year: 

Gas

• Micro businesses – 10.000 KWH per year 
• Small businesses – 25,000 KWH per year 
• Medium businesses – 45000 KWH per year 

Electricity 

• Micro businesses – 5.000 – 15,000 KWH per year 
• Small businesses – 15,000 – 30,000 KWH per year 
• Medium businesses – 30,000 – 50,000 KWH per year 

Now when we compare this to the average home office consultation the differences becomes apparent with most home offices using only 360 KWH per year to power their own home offices. 

To give you an idea (using the average price of $ 0.10 per KWH of energy, this would consist of the following:

• Desktop computer – $27.50 – 275KWH  
• Laptop – $$5.30 –   530 KWH
• Monitor – $4.30 – 43 KWH
• Printer – $1.10  – 11 KWH
• Tablet – $0.61-  6.1 KWH
• Smartphone $0.45 – 4.1 KWH

Now whilst this dramatic drop is significant, there is still more that you can do working remotely to further reduce your energy consumption including: 

• Using power more frequently at night time ( wish usually has lower tariff costs) 
• Unplug appliances when not in use 
• Reduce hot water consumption 
• Changing over to LED lights where possible ( you can find my recommendations here) 
• Maintaining HVAC systems, reading up on the latest energy policies and sticking to them. 

It’s important that people don’t get complacent with their energy usage when working from home, with the 2020 pandemic showing that whilst energy usage was saved working from home, it did creep up due to people having more time to travel or increased energy usage with entire families working from home. 

If you stay vigilant, energy consumption working from home will be a lot less than commuting and working from an office. 

My suggestions then would be to invest in energy saving items, my recommendation would be the following: 

• Environmentally friendly laptop 
• Energy efficient monitor 
• Energy efficient lighting 

You can also consider carrying out an energy audit on your home office to identify which items use the most amount of energy when working from home. 

Less noise pollution 

Noise pollution is often considered a hidden type of pollution as at first glance it doesn’t  seem to impact the health of people working from an office. 

The truth is that noise pollution is one of the largest contributors towards Noise induced hearing loss ( NIHL) and can lead to heap of other health problems including: 

• High blood pressure
• Heart Disease 
• Reduced sleep 
• Higher stress 

So how does noise pollution affect office based workers? 

Well working from a traditional office means that you have less control on making the changes to block the sound coming into your office. As you share this space with others investing in soundproofing materials or a good set of headphones might not be against your organization’s policy. 

On top of this, think back to your recent commutes, I’m sure you must have past construction sites at some point. 

Consistent sustained noise pollution caused by these loud noises that you go past everyday can have a severe impact over time working from an office. 

Now when you compare this to working from home, not only will you reduce your own noise pollution caused by your car’s engine and tyres, you also have full control of your workspace through a home office blocking out any of the external sounds that would traditionally interrupt you. 

The best way to do this is by investing in a pair of noise cancelling headphones – my recommendation is the Sony WH1000xm3 which has market leading technology that cancels out pretty much any sound you might be trying to get out of – you can find out more about them here. 

You can also invest in soundproofing pads which have proves to reduce the sound coming in and out of your workspace –  you  can find my recommendation here  – (link takes you to Amazon) 

If you are unable to invest in items like these doing something as simple as investing in a rug or carpet or using egg cartons to reduce noise like in the video below can go a long way in driving out any sounds that may interrupt you. 

 

Smaller plastic wastage 

Anyone who has seen Planet Earth 2 knows just how much of an impact plastic is having on the environment. 

Plastic has now entered the water supply with fish and firsts being found with microscopic plastics in their systems. 

It’s estimated that around 300 millions tons of plastic is wasted every year globally with around 50% of this being single use plastic. 

Working from a shared office environment helps contribute towards this by things like grabbing a morning coffee on your way to work, buying office equipment not using it and then throwing it out and having environmental policies in place that do the bare minimum. 

Working from home can change this by giving you direct control of your work environment and can let you do the following: 

• Invest in quality items such as monitors and laptops and not worry about updating them every few years
•  Drink from reusable bottles and tumblers made of 100% recyclable materials
•  Reduce consumption in plastic bottles 
• Cooking your food at home to avoid plastics from takeaway boxes 
• Making your own coffee at home 

Less paper waste 

Paper wastage is another major contributing pollutant and is where most office waste comes from with 75% of office waste being either paper or cardboard. ( according to the EPA)

Most paper or  cardboard is entirely recyclable and yet it is still filling up landfills meaning that even with the option of recycling, paper wastage from offices is still causing unnecessary wastage to the environment. 

One of the  biggest solutions then with the advent of technology is that working from home allows employees to go completely paperless. 

With software like google docs and microdot word collaborating and sharing information via the web is  easier then before and makes the need for a lot of traditional paper wastage to be irrelevant. 

Even things like sales contracts which previously needed to be signed in person are now accepting and digital signatures making the moves to a paperless workplace faster than before. 

Food wastage 

Food wastage is another massive problem affecting the workplace. 

A lot of organisations are now providing their employees with things like free fruit, water in plastic bottles or even providing them with lunch as a way of  keeping their employees engaged or attracting the top talent to roles. 

Whilst this is a fantastic thing for employee wellbeing it can have a severe impact  on a lot of food not getting  fishing or  ending up in the bin. 

I’ve heard countless  stories of entire  loaves of bread going uneaten or fresh fruit rotting due to lack of uptake. 

With 1.9 million tons of food being wasted every year in the UK alone it’s important that we all [ay a little bi  more attention to home much food we are throwing away. 

Working from home allows you to be in control of your diet, giving you the ability to cook out your portions and eat only what you need. 

Apps like MyFitnessPal help me massively with this. 

Another huge food impact on the environment when working from home would be to change your diet to eat only environmentally friendly items. 

This could include things like getting rid of certain oils, reducing the consumption of meat in your diet ( which currently contributes to around 14.5% of the world greenhouse gas emission) or just eating organic whole foods. 

Air quality 

Whilst greenhouses gasses are the biggest problem caused by the commute to work overall air quality is also a major issue that affects people’s health with more particulates. 

One study even found that during the Covid 19 lockdown, emissions in mega cities like London reduced by 25%.Showing that in even a short period of time the impact of poor air quality can be massively improved by working from home. 

More opportunities to help the environment

The final major benefit remote workers and working from home can help with the reduction of pollution and impacting their environments is by giving back to causes that help benefit the environment. 

Remote workers work 16 days more per year then their office based counterparts and with this additional time they can dedicate some of it to worthwhile causes. 

This can cover a massive array of ideas including: 

• Volunteering at your local garden centre
• Composting 
• Building an environmental friendly garden for wildlife 
• Animal tracking 
• Bee keeping 
• Teaching others about the impacts of pollution 

So now that we know why working from home can reduce pollution and have less of an environmental impact then working from a traditional office, what are some other faqs that people have about working from home and the environment?  

I’ve answerd the most common ones below: 

How many people could telework to help the environment?

In the USA, currently 37% of jobs can be done entirely at home. This is roughly 57 million people. If all 57 million people were to commute, this would save over 330 million tons of Carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere. 

What’s even better is that the population in the USA who will do remote working reole will increase, meaning that as years go by, even fewer emissions will be released into the environment.

How much driving would remote working avoid? 

The average employee in the USA commutes 16 miles per day. This is around 54 minutes for a round trip too and from work. Remote working would avoid 4160 miles of unnecessary travel. 

What is needed to get the full environmental benefits of remote working? 

Whilst cutting out the commute is the largest thing remote workers can do to help the environment, there are a few other things that people can do to get the benefits of remote working, these include: 

• Reducing the amount of paper they use when working from home 
• If they have office equipment that needs replacing ensuring that they dispose of it properly 
• Using energy saving light bulbs
• Switching to energy providers that are 100% renewable if possible 
• Reducing hot water usage 
• Changing their vehicle to an electric car,bicycle or even walking

How to make your home office more environmentally friendly?

There are a few things you can do right now to ensure your office is more environmentally friendly. 

First If your office is not insulated, aim to invest in insulation by either using double glazed windows or investing in insulating foam, this will help keep the heat in and help reduce the amount of central heating you use during the cold winter months. 

I would then invest in low energy using equipment like energy saving light bulbs or LED lights that still allow you to do your job. 

That being said it’s still important that you can work from your office and so I would recommend the following items which are a lot more environmentally friendly than their counterparts whilst still being at the top of their respective fields: 

• Headphones 
• Monitor 
• Laptop 

Why is car pollution bad? 

The biggest pollution caused by working from an office is car pollution caused by the commute. 

Cars pollute a mixture of pollutants including carbon monoxide, Nitrogen oxide as well as a quarter of all hydrocarbons emitted into the earth atmosphere. 

These pollutants can cause a number of side effects of people such as 30,000 premature deaths each years whilst also contributing to respiratory disease like asthma, and bronchitis and heightens chances of getting more severe diseases such as cancer. 

This will put a large strain on the health systems of the world. 

Car emissions also have a catastrophic impact on the environment aiding in climate change and global  warming, melting the ice caps and rising sea levels. 

As such working from home reduces both carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxide which are the two major emissions reduced by remote working.

Is working from home bad for the environment? 

Now it’s always important to be balanced when it comes to discussing topics like remote working and the environmental impacts should also be looked at. 

Whilst remote working and working from home is a better option at reducing the amount of car emissions there are ways in which working from home can add to pollution. 

This can include things like 

• Using more internet data 
• Using more electricity and heat then you would normally 
• Commuting to friends and family now that you are in charge of your diary

A recent study found that whilst remote working was better for the environment in terms of emissions the main problem areas were the summer months in hot countries with increases in usage of air conditioning or more heating use in winter months in cold countries. 

The study also found that the problems associated with this were more around where people got their energy from with most countries not having a 100% sustainable energy. 

What uses the most amount of energy in your home office? 

Desktop PCs tend to use the most amount of energy in private home offices, using  on average 275 KWH of energy per year. More modern laptops are more energy efficient using around 53kwh of energy per year, 

Doing something as simple as turning your laptop, pc or printer off at night time can save a huge amount of energy. 

Is there a link between cities that are polluted and people who don’t work from home? 

Typically organizations that live in wealthier cities and states like Vermont are more likely to allow their employees to work from home. The air quality in Vermont is amongst the best in the nation. The lack of commute being the biggest driver in air quality.

That being said unless a city is entirely working from home air quality may even worsen due to organisations still having to use energy whilst people work remotely and also use energy, potentially offsetting any benefits caused by the saving in a commute. 

How do normal offices pollute? 

Traditional offices pollute in the following ways 

• Food wastage 
• Plastic wastage 
• Energy consumption 
• Paper wastage 
• The commute of its employees 

Do environmental companies hire remote workers? 

With the increase in the focus on both the environment and the shift to working from home a number of organisations in the environmental sector are focused on attracting the best talent possible. 

As such having a search of the following organisations would be the best thing to do to see if they have working from home roles: 

• AB Agri

• AGCO

• AECOM

• APEM

• Arcadis

• Arup

• Atkins

• British Sugar

• CNH Industrial

• Earth & Marine Environmental Consultants (EAME)

• Environmental Resources Management (ERM)

• JCB

• John Deere

• KUHN

• Magnox

• Mott MacDonald

• RPS Group

• RSK Group

• SLR Consulting

• WSP

What kind of environmental work from home jobs can you get? 

One of the major benefits of working from home is that almost any jobe can be done from home so long as you have a strong internet connection, the following roles in particular both suite working from home and can also help with reducing the amount of pollution 

• Sales – working for an organisation where you collect donation to their causes that are environmentally focused 
• Engineering – coming up with the technologies that are more environmentally friendly then our existing items 
• Journalism – reporting on  environmental stories that do not get the coverage that they should
• Teacher – teaching and giving lectures on the environmental impact that pollution can cause 
• Data analyst – analysing the results of studies and collating them into information to see people’s impact on the environment 
• Social media marketer – raising issues through the medium of social networks and social media marketing. 

Do remote workers know they make a difference? 

A 2017 study by Virtual Vacations found that 97% of people who work from home realised the positive impact they were having on the environment by doing so. 

Does working from home really make an environmental difference? 

Working from home reduces the amount of carbon and other emissions given off by cars on the road by16705g per day per day. Working From home also helps the reduction in noise pollution, tyre and glass pollution and helps reduce the hidden cost on human health. 

Some studies have shown  that employees are less likely to care about conserving energy when working from a normal office as they do not see the direct financial implication of wasting excess electricity. 

Does remote working shift energy costs to employees? 

One study found that employees who work from home spend less than half on energy costs per person they would if there were in an office. Any momentary increases in energy usage is likely to be counteracted by the huge cost savings in the lack of commute remote workers have. 

Studies on remote working pollution 

I know that we covered a fair few studies in this post so I thought I would summarize some of the key one below: 

Study	Finding
Sun Microsystems	Working from home saves, time, money and decreases carbon output
Journal of environmental psychology	Employees are less likely to worry about wasting energy then they would if there were at home
Virtual Vacations	People who work from home are more positive about the impact they are having on the environment
Union of Concerned Scientists	Half of the people living in the USA don’t have access to the minimum healthy air requirements
UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology	Emissions in London fell by 60% during the covid lockdown.

Working from home can reduce the pollution

So hopefully this post has helped you understand the link between a better environment and more people working remotely.

If you;re interesting in finding out more of the benefits of working from home you can check out the following posts below:

• Working from home vs the office 
• Is working from home productive? 

A lot of people reading my blog want to know what products I recommend for a home office/remote working. You can find out my recommendations here and learn how I make money whilst working remotely on the side here.