10 Ways to reduce your carbon footprint whilst WFH
10 Ways To Reduce Your Carbon Footprint Whilst Working From Home
2022 will bring together two trends that have dominated that headlines for the past 18 months – climate change and working from home. The shift to long term home working spotlights just how much data and electricity a sole employee or individual uses because it is no longer aggregated up into the overall office building usage. We can all now see for ourselves what we are using.
James Hand, co-founder of Giki, which aims to help people live more sustainably, says there are two key things to think about.
‘One: How much energy do you save by not travelling to work? Two: How much extra energy do you use by being at home?’ he asks.
There was a generalised assumption at the beginning of lockdown last year that carbon emissions would take a tumble because of the sudden cut in commutes, but Which Magazine conducted a readers survey in March 2021 – after a year of lockdown – and found that 56% of respondents were heating their homes more often or for longer, 47% used more water at home, 40% were doing more cooking at home and 39% were using TVs, game consoles and laptops more.
During 2020, the UK’s overall energy use dropped as businesses closed but home energy use increased by as much as a third during the middle of the day, mitigating much of the positive gain made by the lack of commuters.
Globally, CO2 emissions declined by 5.8% in 2020, the largest ever drop, however in 2021 global energy-related CO2 emissions are projected to normalise and grow a further 4.8% as demand for coal, oil and gas rebounds with the economy.
With this all in mind we’ve put together our top tips for how to reduce your carbon footprint when you work from home.
1. Overall Personal Carbon footprint
Knowing your carbon footprint is an important step in understanding how you can address it. Calculating your personal carbon footprint and examine the steps you can take to reduce it.
There are plenty of carbon and environmental footprint calculators available such as Carbon Footprint Calculator and WWF Environmental Calculator.
2. on your computer
In 2020, the carbon footprint of our gadgets, the internet, the electricity that powers them and the systems that keep them going accounted for about 3.7% of global greenhouse emissions – similar to that of the airline industry. That is projected to double by 2025.
Reduce excessive emails and large attachments
Although digital communications save paper and printing energy and costs, energy is still used to send, receive and read online documents.
Sending even a short email is estimated to add about four grams of CO2 equivalent into the atmosphere. To put this into perspective, the carbon output of sending on 65 brief mails is on par with driving an average-sized car a kilometre. An email with a large attachment could have a footprint of up to 50 grams.
We suggest you:
· Think twice before you hit ‘reply to all’
· Also think twice before an acknowledgment or ‘thank you’ – and if that seems a little rude, an acknowledgement in the subject line of an otherwise blank email is more effective and energy efficient.
· Messaging apps can often be more energy efficient for short informal messages
Unsubscribe from almost everything
According to estimates by antispam service Cleanfox, the average person receives 2,850 unwanted emails every year from subscriptions, which are cumulatively responsible for 28.5kg CO2 emissions per person.
We suggest you:
· Go through your inbox and unsubscribe from any unwanted or no longer of interest email lists you’re on
· Keep up to date with your unsubscribes – it’s incredible how quickly accidental subscriptions add up
· When shopping online, you’re inevitably asked whether you want to receive emails from the company – unless you’re really keen on the company, always say ‘no’
Turn off your cameras
Dr Rabih Bashroush from the University of East London calculated that a one hour Zoom call between two people on PCs in London had the same carbon footprint as driving a car two kilometres or taking a train 10 kilometres. Further research from The Resources, Conservation and Recycling journal estimates a one-hour video conference call with the video on generates 157.3 grams of carbon dioxide versus the estimated 6.2 grams generated from an audio-only call; a 96% reduction.
To further press the message home, the study also estimated that if one million video conference users were to switch to meetings without a camera, they would save more than 9,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide - the equivalent emissions of powering a city of 36,000 people for one month through coal-fired power stations.
We suggest you:
· Go audio only – it might not be possible all the time but given the possible reductions in emissions, it’s worth it even part of the time
· Spread the word. Given that working from home and video conferencing being very much the ‘new norm’, these studies are new but could make a real
difference to long term digital emissions from home offices.
Change your search engine
Every time you hit search, your search engine is using multiple servers to retrieve your query – it is therefore using energy and producing GHG. There is no hard and fast calculation for what the carbon footprint is for the average internet search but WebFX estimates that the 3.5 billion Google searches performed daily produce 700 million grams of CO2 which would drive you 1.67 million miles, or three and half times to the moon and back.
Most search engines are making efforts to ensure that they are climate responsible - Google uses a mixture of renewable energy and carbon offsetting to reduce the carbon footprint of its operations, while Microsoft, which owns the Bing search engine, has promised to become carbon negative by 2030. So we may reach a point where a quick internet search is genuinely carbon neutral.
However, the Ecosia search engine is not only carbon neutral, but has built its own solar plants and now produce twice as much solar power as they need to power all Ecosia searches – meaning they can now sell clean energy back to the grid. They are carbon negative. Add to that the fact they plant 1 tree for every 45 searches done on their engine means your searches add a little biodiversity back into the world too.
Or a real new kid on the block is SearchScene, founded in 2017 by a husband and wife team horrified by the enormous profits made by Google (and the other tech mammoths). SearchScene is financed by adverts but donates 95% of its profits to charity – and as it is powered by Bing, the search results are just as reliable as results you’d expect from a long established search engine.
We suggest you:
· Switch to Ecosia. If clean energy, biodiversity and climate change are close to your heart.
· Switch to Search Scene. If charitable donations, straightforward tax declarations and a compelling founder’s story are what you value.
· You could even switch between the two…
3. Around the house
Office workers or work space renters have until recently had to sacrifice an eco-energy preferences to their employer or landlord. However, the pandemic has shifted that responsibility on to the individual (for those of us lucky enough to be working from home) and enabled us to bring our consumer power to bear in our personal workplace.
Switch off
The greenest energy is the energy that is saved!
A computer that is on for eight hours a day uses almost 600 kWh and emits 175 kg of CO2 per year. For a laptop this is between 44kg-88kg of CO2 per year. In stand-by mode the power consumption of both a desktop and a laptop falls to about a third of that; a substantial reduction but in the case of a computer that is an easily avoidable 58kg of CO2 per year*. (Similar calculations can be applied to TVs, gaming consoles, radios etc etc…)
There is no need to leave PCs, laptops or monitors on overnight. Also make sure that printers and mobile phone chargers are not left on unnecessarily, especially at night and the weekend as these too will use unnecessary power.
We suggest you:
· Switch all work-related electronic items off at night. You could immediately reduce your CO2 emissions by a 1/3
· If sockets are hard to reach or you’re likely to forget, use timer switches or plug-in remote-controlled sockets to turn off laptops and printers
Make your office space cosy
If you work in the same room all day, there’s no need to heat the whole house. It is estimated that 19% of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions come from warming up the places we live and work, with more than three-quarters of this coming from domestic buildings. In the US it is a whopping 38%. Of course, exactly how much of your own emissions come from heating your home will depend on where you live but living in a cooler climate doesn’t preclude anyone from making a change. Turning the thermostat down by one degree can save 310kg (and £60) of carbon dioxide a year for a typical UK household.
We suggest you:
· Turn down or switch off the central heating and use a portable heater during working hours. Turn down your heating by at least one degree – or more if you
are comfortable
· Wear an extra jumper if needs be – we don’t mean to sound like your gran, but wearing a t-shirt in November is surely something of an unnecessary luxury?
· Remember to get up from your desk and move around. As well as being scientifically proven to help concentration, taking breaks for gentle exercise will get
the blood pumping and keep you warm.
Energy providers
In the UK there are now a plethora of 100% renewable tariffs out there that are often very affordable. These vary from larger, long standing energy companies who have transitioned to renewable or smaller organisations set up specifically to provide green energy. Making the switch is very straightforward
We suggest you:
· Check who your energy supplier is, what proportion of their energy comes from renewables and – if necessary – switch
4.During your lunch break
The UK was responsible for 6.4 million tonnes of edible food waste in 2018, with 70% of that coming from households - according to a study by the sustainable charity Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP). The same study estimates that food waste creates - more than 25 million tonnes of greenhouse gases (GHG). That’s 5.5% of our entire national Green House Gas emissions – and more than the total annual GHG emissions of Kenya.
We suggest you:
· Plan meals in advance, including workday lunches, and include bulk cooking and leftovers in your meal planning
· Buy what you need and eat what you buy
· If you can, shop local. Small greengrocers are more likely to sell loose veg and produce without the plastic wrapping
· Clean out your recyclables – the smallest amount of grease or crispy bits can spoil the entire bag of recycling so when in doubt, clean it
We have plenty of other resources to help you make the switch to green energy, understand sustainability a little better or put the importance of your carbon footprint into the broader picture.
