Web Worker Daily

With Earth Day (April 22) fast approaching, the environmental benefits of telecommuting are once again in the news. The most concrete analysis I’ve seen lately comes from Undress4Success, a site offering advice and research for folks who work at home. They asked the simple question: what would be the impact if everyone who could work from home actually did? The answer they came up with for the USA: a savings of 625 million barrels of oil a year, as well as $43 billion less spent on gasoline and elimination of a couple of weeks of wasted commuting time per person.

Of course, no one expects the entire population to switch over to telework en masse, and a jump from the current 4% to 40% would undoubtedly cause dislocations elsewhere (would there be enough internet bandwidth, for example?). But the numbers are fun to look at and can give you, the web worker, a warm fuzzy feeling. They also have a page where you can check the numbers for a particular locale, or get the underlying sources and assumptions emailed to you.