Help the environment. Stop commuting. Work at home.
Telecommuting has been something of a dream for many years, and whilst some enjoy partial or full-time working from home, most people still commute to a place of work most of the time.
Now the RAC Foundation is asking more people to consider working from home to cut CO2 emissions, reduce congestion and save businesses money.
New technology coupled with much faster communications systems means that this is much more of a possibility for many office-based and tech jobs that can utilise wi-fi, Virtual Private Networks (VPN), high-speed broadband connections, and so on. The Foundation says that 50% of UK workers are so-called ‘information workers’ who can do their job regardless of location.
Even cutting back on travel by working at home for one day per week, the Energy Saving Trust has calculated that CO2 emissions could be cut by 1%, and annual miles saved would equal 35,000 round trips to the moon. It’s also equivalent to taking 1.7 million cars off the road.
For public transport users, I presume it would make the trains, Tube and buses more pleasant too.
The RAC Foundation would also like businesses to invest more in online meetings and communities, using wikis, blogs (I’m sure every company needs a blog) and videoconferencing, rather than having conferences that everyone must travel to.
Of course doing away with commuting all together isn’t every going to happen but hopefully technology can help make some commutes unnecessary.
Now, who’s going to remember to turn off all those computers connected to online communities?
RAC Foundation
