It’s no surprise that working remotely can have benefits for your environmental footprint: Working offsite has knocked around 18,000 miles off my public transport usage from last year alone. But no matter how careful or responsible web workers might be, the reality is that first-world or “western” lifestyles and standards of living are inherently linked with resource consumption. You may be doing your bit, but you’re unlikely to be living a carbon-neutral life. Read the rest of this entry »
Source: U. S. Department of Transportation http://www.climate.dot.gov/about/transportations-role/overview.html
Transportation is the second-largest source of U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions, accounting for 28 percent of the total. As web workers, many of us can choose where we work, and how we get there.
I’ve been lucky enough to have a career that’s allowed me to live and work in places where I don’t need a car. There are many such places, even in North America, where being car-less is possible and desirable. (Of course, in most of Europe, it’s much easier.) Read the rest of this entry »
Today is Blog Action Day. Held on Oct. 15 every year, it’s an event that unites thousands of bloggers worldwide, highlighting a particular issue. This year’s theme is climate change.
As web workers, most of us don’t face the same daily commute that our cubicle-dwelling colleagues do, and it’s easy to think that we’re already “doing our bit” for climate change (although there is some debate as to whether web workers are truly green). Reducing transportation is great, but there’s still much more that you can do. Today is an opportunity to brainstorm some ways to reduce the resources you consume and the carbon emissions you’re responsible for.
We’ll be providing some tips for reducing your impact on the environment today, but we’ve already published quite a lot of posts on the topics of sustainability and reducing energy consumption for web workers. Here are some highlights:
If you’re interested in technology and the environment, you should read our sister blog, Earth2Tech.
What steps are you taking to minimize your environmental impact?
We’ve all heard talk about remote work being more sustainable than sitting in an air-conditioned office block with your car parked in the basement. But just how sustainable is your remote work?
Here are a few ideas that might help you cut your greenhouse emissions and bump up the sustainability of your lifestyle.
You’re probably aware of the “three Rs”: reduce, reuse, recycle. Keep this mantra in mind as you approach an assessment of your remote working lifestyle. What can you do to you reduce your resource usage? Can you reuse objects rather than discard them? And where and how can you recycle the items you want or need to discard?
I use another set of criteria to assess prospective purchases of things like computers, office furniture, and so on: Read the rest of this entry »
Being a web worker just by its very nature (pun intended), helps keep our planet green. By working from home, we automatically cut the amount of fossil fuels consumed and carbon output that the daily commute involves. For more about how technology is going green and making the world a better place to live, read our sister blog Earth2Tech.
In the meantime how can we, as web workers, be more green?
Read the rest of this entry »
It’s no surprise that working remotely can have benefits for your environmental footprint: Working offsite has knocked around 18,000 miles off my public transport usage from last year alone. But no matter how careful or responsible web workers might be, the reality is that first-world or “western” lifestyles and standards of living are inherently linked with resource consumption. You may be doing your bit, but you’re unlikely to be living a carbon-neutral life. Read the rest of this entry »
Web Work 101: How To Escape The Cubicle
