Lanhdanan
73633
1400
8
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/18/people-who-work-from-home-all-the-time-cut-emissions-by-54-against-those-in-office
Nov 2, 2023 1:22 PM
Lanhdanan
73633
1400
8
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/18/people-who-work-from-home-all-the-time-cut-emissions-by-54-against-those-in-office
Taxian
Makes sense: Less commute emissions, no need to double up on heating during the winter (especially if you're worried the pipes might freeze if you don't leave the heat on), etc.
brianbrian4566
If you drive less you buy less cars and making and shipping cars is terrible for the environment
jinbee
My boss makes us all come in every day because he doesn't trust WFH, yet due to his incompetence I've wasted many many days sat 10ft away from him when I could gave at least been at home doing the laundry or something useful to one of us.
unencumberedbythethoughtprocess
Not from their butt.
StillNotYouTube
One of the great perks of working from home, you don't have to hold them in, just let er rip.
IMoveWithTheEleganceOfAnAfricanElephant
ive put 400 miles on my car since july (took a look at my oil change sticker the other day because i knew it's been a while). working from home is the shit, imo
n0n53n53
I bought a car in 2021 and have put ~4000 miles on it total, if I was driving back and forth to work I'd have done ~12-15k miles.
GrumpyMe
If you think a corporate suits gives the slightest fuck about your carbon emissions...
Superchief86
I'm doing my fifth WFH day in a row tomorrow. Because fuck it. No one checks up on me. Plus I'm trying to grow out my shitty beard at the moment and it is at peak shitty right now.
yalczero
That's great if you have a job that allows that. If you don't we need a much more robust and efficient mass transit system nationwide, not just in a few high population cities.
OpenMouthHotKiss
That'd be good but I also would like other people working from home solely so they don't clog up the roads. I feel like most of the time on the road is being stuck in traffic
redsmerf
Just a reminder that 71% of green-house gas emissions are caused by 100 companies. Even this is an attempt to shift the blame.
taurondir
I'm pretty sure people working from home also look at a ton of porn so their "emissions" would probably be a lot higher.
jgrcdd
But what about the commercial real estate valuations? Won't somebody think of the absurdly wealthy?
surfaussie
My BIL's job can be done 100% remotely but they require him to go in 2x a week because it's not "fair" to the people that can't work remotely
notblubber
I dunno, I emit about the same whether I'm home or at work.
TankardHoot
PathologicalLier
Wfh has no real downside. Its just fking mindboggling that it isnt universally accepted
IUsedToHaveUsernameOnce
I'm doing my part! I also live close to a super market so I just walk my groceries. Need to pop to CBD? Catch a train. Only time I drive is for fun like to go to the beach. I see no good reason why nearly every office job shouldn't be fully remote.
58dad
Oh there are emissions in the home office too. Sometimes I am asked to leave.
poutinemontreal
Yep, but middle Management (useless) and HR (even more) are having a tantrum realizing they dont serve a useful purpose. They don't have anyone to check and gossip to hear.
arleas
The only people who want everyone in the office are those people who paid for the office and those people who are selling office space. That's it. OH and I guess some middle manager who pretty much has no job if there's nobody to micromanage all damn day long.
cjandstuff
And are more productive, but NOOOOO corporate demands I spend 8 hours a day IN THE OFFICE staring at my computer screen.
goodbyeitwasfunwhileitlasted
StillWittyMFs
I dunno about that. I have a lot more access to nachos and chickpeas at home….
BobAllen2004
I feel like 95% of my car use was commuting. And all other uses are probably the same, since I started working from home is 2020. Hopefully, I reduced my car emissions by 95%. As for electric use for my computer, etc, I think that's the same if I am home or the office, and since they sent everyone to,work from home, the just closed the office, so there's much less energy used there, too.
mbq7
A liter of gasoline has 32 MJ of energy, which is circa 8.9 kWh, so about 89 h of a solid desktop computer use (~100W) or at least a month of laptop 24/7 without sleep (~10W).
oldguyexlurker
'Had to upgrade my work laptop. The new power supply is 240W. Sucks when I'm travelling, but laptop works nicely. I do find I shut it down more frequently though.
LurkMasterP
I absolutely know that my commute accounted for over 75% of my vehicle use, because I now work from home 4 days a week, and my car needs gas once a month instead of once a week. The net result is an effective pay raise for me and I put less pollution into the world.
fandsor
When the pandemic first sent us home, I saved *so* much money on gas, it was incredible. I was suddenly scraping by a lot less on my paltry wage.
JinxRocks
That reminds me. I need to get out my battery charger. I don’t drive enough now to keep batteries fully charged.
OpenMouthHotKiss
And they'd all not have to waste 3 to 4 hours of their day on their commute. I'm so fucking tired of traffic. It should only take me an hour tops to get to work, but somehow it takes almost two hours, the same goes for trying to leave. Driving would be great if it wasn't for other people on the road. That was my favorite part about COVID. Less people on the road so I could get around with no traffic. I would have preferred to be one that works from home, but no traffic was also great.
KipperFillets
Same here. Plus I don't mind working a bit later if need be as I'm already home. I'd prefer to work than commute to be honest.
rouzuki
This is my stance on the matter. Am I working from home and an incident occurs late in the shift? Sure I'll take care of that. But if I'm working from the office, it's tomorrow's problem.
KipperFillets
I work for head office in retail, so a problem could mean lost sales. Sorting the issue there and then makes a much better situation for everyone. Recently an ancient bug in the till software disabled them one by one. Took 5 hours to find, fix and release new software, but we lost £4m in sales. Not sure I could leave it, the fallout the next day would have been horrendous.
rouzuki
But they'd pay you overtime for that right? It was my mistake for not including, but my job would not pay overtime unless I hit some ungodly hourly total for the week. If they paid me overtime and I wasn't scheduled for something important already in my personal life, then yeah I'd handle it. There are some other exclusions as well, like for example I was gunning for a raise/promo.
KipperFillets
The salary sort of reflects the expectation to drop everything when needed. It's not often fortunately, and we can take a bit of time off in lieu if we want.
shyriath
Gee, it sure was nice to be in better mental health, with a better work/life balance, to not have to deal with a commute through the city AND to have less of an impact on the environment. But I guess it's more important to have "spontaneous interaction" in the office, so oh well.
shyriath
(To be fair, I still have a hybrid schedule. It's just nowhere near as satisfying, in any sense at all, as only coming into the office when physically necessary.)
ChickenROAR
In a country built on parking spots and highways, who knew?
OpenMouthHotKiss
FR though there is so much space wasted by parking lots and office buildings
thedudeman519
Allegedly Will Wright , creator of Sin City , stayed that in their research for the game they found that "to make the game realistic we would have had mostly parking lots "
Donoiw
So, Not using cars lowers the amount of pollution from cars? 🤔
transientmind
Office buildings are also vastly less energy efficient than homes.
StillNotYouTube
Interesting hypothesis, we're going to need additional funding to investigate further.
irrationalcompromise365
Hey, it took a pandemic and 3 years for them to come this close to saying those words.
KiLLeRdAcKeL
It's wild, isn't it?
supergreenpasta
I think it's also highlighting the fact that most our individual consumer emissions, come from our use of cars. WFH cuts emissions more than buy solar panels...or going vegan.
commentsivehadafew
We need to require companies to start including employee commutes in their total emissions reporting
Tardis1217
And taxing the shit out of companies who COULD be 100% remote but choose not to.
METROlD
Ooooh. I like it.
StartingtoFeelOldandSlow
My company actually sent out a survey asking about commutes to do just this!
wetAnimal
Absolutely!
verybamboo
That and to pay for the time spent commuting. Losing 2-3 hrs a day driving or taking public transportation etc etc.
Jarjarthejedi
Scope 3 emissions like this are becoming more standard thankfully. Just need to push it even further and get the USA to not be so far behind the rest of the developed world in requiring reporting :/. https://ghgprotocol.org/sites/default/files/2022-12/Chapter7.pdf
yalczero
And in their pay. At least $140 from my paycheck goes to just gas to get to work alone.
BigDaddysMeatWagon
Before I started working from home 3/5 of the week, I spent 5 hours driving per week.
MrStealYourGiF
I am not seeing how that won't have a ton of negative blowback on individual employees or vulnerable jobseekers vs actually forcing top end responsible corporate behavior. i.e. Fred who is coming in from 30 miles out because he has to live-in with frail parents to keep an eye on them.. oh sorry Fred you're having a big effect on our numbers, clear your desk.
IUsedToHaveUsernameOnce
Right... I forget you Americans have no rights and can be fired on a whim.
Sinasohn
Good point. Make the employers choose between paying for commute time and paying additional salary add-on for cost-of-living/quality-of-life differences. That is, if you're in San Francisco, either you pay for the time spent getting to the office from somewhere affordable or you pay an extra amount for the cost difference (or quality difference) between living in the City and living somewhere else.
Sinasohn
The quality-of-life point is important so they don't move the office to somewhere like Fresno and make everyone live there.
PowerToAllThePeople
Or they just fire you and hire local...
Sinasohn
Which, if they can find qualified employees locally, might not be a bad thing. Hopefully, however, they can realize how much they save (and all the costs they can push onto their employees) by switching to wfh.
Sinasohn
Note: cost of office space, electricity, etc. gets paid for by remote workers instead of the company. Still better than paying for gas and having to commute but it's not insignificant to the company.
InkyBlinkyPinkyAndClyde
It also isn't fair to people who are paying far more to live closer and have a shorter commute. Rewarding people for living further away from work will only *increase* commute times.
Holedemort
Then they can move out to a cheaper place.
InkyBlinkyPinkyAndClyde
Right. Which will *increase* emissions. Because more people will choose to commute. Even now the people with long commutes are mainly doing it because it's cheaper than living near their place of work. So making it even *more* cheap will incent *more* people to commute further.
Holedemort
But if they are 100% WFH I don't see why they would commute.
duoplicity
Freeing up car lanes also make it easier for those who still have to travel and further reduces the pollution
Derfboy
The shipping industry would like a word.
icanzbjoed
Less idling, traffic, congestion... agreed.
majorcovert
Your welcome
DorgEndo
In 2020 when so many worked remote and I could get to work (clinic) it was glorious to have no traffic issues
DamnThursdays
I started working for my public transport commission. In training, we talked about how fast routes would get done during lockdown, even with less employees. If most people took public transit, public transit would be more efficient because there would be less cars.
nccomputermechanics4
It takes less gas to drive a consistent speed Instead of the constant speed up slow down of congested traffic driving.
MerriMod
Not just cars either. A person working at home uses vastly less electricity and resources than a giant office building that has to power the whole place, have industrial-tier AC/heat systems, and an enormous array of other costs and demands people don't usually even consider in the first place. The upkeep required just for offices to exist is insane; offices are a massive waste of resources when the bulk of all work done in them is digital these days and could be done from anywhere.
wmnii
Ahhhhh, thank you! I could NOT figure out how that math was working.
SindarElla
Not to mention it's safer because there will be fewer people on the road to get into accidents
KipperFillets
+1 for correct use of "fewer". A lost art.
euphoricopportunity
I see 'fewer' less and less these days. It had had me concerned.
trayal
It's too bad that that is happening.
SindarElla
FlavorIntensifies
As well as wear and tear on infrastructure I would think, no?
IAmTheBadW01f
To some extent, but wear on roads is almost entirely environmental and trucks, wear is strongly nonlinear with weight. You'll do a lot better at lifting 1 pound 1000 times than lifting 1000 pounds once.
FlavorIntensifies
Sometimes I know things, and sometimes I don't, thanks dude
TherapistHere
I mean, there would probably less trucks on the road too cuz less need to move fuels, materials, with more people at home.
IAmTheBadW01f
Also fair, and more in the longer term with less construction of office buildings