The Environmental Cost of

Working Remotely
-The internet and it’s supported technologies count for 3.7% of all global greenhouse
emissions (Gri ths, 2020)

-Humans generate 1.7 billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions a year. To split this
between all of us statistically means we’re all responsible for 400g (although big room for
error as this doesn’t account for individual di erences) (Gri ths, 2020)

-Producing one MacBook Pro causes 169kg of greenhouse emissions (13-inch MacBook
Pro Environmental Report, 2020)

-Producing one iPhone 11 Pro creates 65kg of Carbon emissions3 (Product

Environmental Report iPhone 11 Pro, 2019)

-Running one MacBook Pro annually causes 9.5kg of greenhouse emissions (13-inch
MacBook Pro Environmental Report, 2020)

-An email with one attachment is believed to have a carbon footprint upwards of 50g.
(Gri ths, 2020)

-Research has suggested that one professional generates 135kg of CO2e per year just
from emails - the equivalent of driving 200 miles in a family car (Gri ths, 2020)

-Research from Cleanfox indicates the average user annually receives spam email with an
impact of 29CO2e (Gri ths, 2020)

-Companies such as Ecosia are carbon negative; by using their platform, “every search
request removes 1kg of CO2 from the atmosphere.” ("Carbon neutral" is not enough":
Ecosia built its own solar plants, 2020)

-“a recent study by independent consultants WSP Environmental found that home
workers typically produce almost a third more CO2 in a year than employees based in the
o ce.” (Roberts, 2020)

-Data from the University of Winchester says each full time student/faculty member is
annually responsible for 620kg of carbon dioxide per year (Jane, 2012)

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 The Environmental Cost of
Working Remotely

-You can calculate your own carbon footprint at https://calculator.bulb.co.uk

-Studies have shown videoconferencing, on average, takes around 7% of the energy/

carbon of a physical meeting (Ong, Moors and Sivaraman, 2012)

-Zoom is estimated to generate 282 grams of CO2 per hour per person (Greenwood,
2020)


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 The Environmental Cost of
Working Remotely
Ecosia - the search engine that plants trees. 2020. "Carbon Neutral" Is Not
Enough": Ecosia Built Its Own Solar Plants. [online] Available at: <https://
www.ecosia.org/> [Accessed 19 November 2020]

Apple Inc., 2020. 13-inch MacBook Pro Environmental Report. [online] Available at:
<https://www.apple.com/environment/pdf/products/notebooks/13-
inch_MacBookPro_PER_may2019.pdf> [Accessed 19 November 2020]

Apple, 2019. Product Environmental Report iPhone 11 Pro. [online] Available at:
<https://www.apple.com/environment/pdf/products/iphone/
iPhone_11_Pro_PER_sept2019.pdf> [Accessed 19 November 2020]

Ong, D., Moors, T. and Sivaraman, V., 2012. Complete life-cycle assessment of the
energy/CO2 costs of videoconferencing vs face-to-face meetings. 2012 IEEE
Online Conference on Green Communications (GreenCom),

Roberts, A., 2020. Costing The Earth, Working From Home. [Podcast] UK: BBC
Radio 4. Available at: <https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00tpncw> [Accessed
19 November 2020]

Greenwood, T., 2020. Has The Lockdown Reduced Our CO2 Emissions?. [online]
Wholegrain Digital. Available at: <https://www.wholegraindigital.com/blog/covid-19-
reduced-co2/> [Accessed 19 November 2020]

Jane, M., 2012. University of Winchester - Carbon Management Plan - Annual

Monitoring Report. University of Winchester Intranet, [online] Available at: <https://
unimailwinchesterac.sharepoint.com/sites/intranet/publishing-university-projects-
and-developments/Documents/ProjectsAndEstatesManagement/
CarbonManagement/CMP_Annual_Monitoring_Report_2011-12_Portal.pdf>
[Accessed 19 November 2020]

Grif ths, S., 2020. Why your internet habits are not as clean as you think. BBC
Future, [online] Available at: <https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200305-why-
your-internet-habits-are-not-as-clean-as-you-think> [Accessed 19 November 2020].

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