Home-working can dramatically reduce UK employee carbon footprint

The RAC Foundation has been busy preparing a plethora of encouraging facts and figures that suggest the UK could cut individual workers carbon footprint damage drastically, by opting to work from home in the future.

The RAC Foundation study reveals that British workers who commit themselves to the daily commute waste an alarming amount of energy over the course of a year.

Research has concluded that a staggering 80% reduction on expendable energy resultant by working from home could be manageable if industry chose to go down this constructive route in larger numbers, which would positively affect wider issues such as carbon emissions and congestion.

A startling two-thirds of an average office worker's energy consumption is being frittered away just getting themselves to and from their place of work. It's calculated that between 1.5 and 4 tonnes of carbon-heavy footprints result from the daily commute.

To highlight the environment-savvy awareness of today's second-ever annual National Work from Home Day, the RAC Foundation's sums afford the clearest picture yet as to the price the environment is paying for our continued over-abusing of cars.

Attempting to furthermore underline the positive effects that remote-working would also have on the nations wallets and congestion impatience, the RAC Foundation's findings detail just what wastage is accounted for once commuters reach the traditional office space.

In conjunction with the Carbon Trust, the RAC Foundation published the following points of concern:

• Office space is only used 22% of the time during a five day working period, between the hours of 8am and 6pm.

• 8% of the time is spent on holiday.

• 30% account for non-working days.

• 40% goes down to non-working hours.

• Desk utilisation audits imply individual workstations rarely occupied for more than 45% of the normal 9 – 5pm working day.

• Unless offices are configured for flexible working patterns, they will be empty 70% of the time, and half empty for the remaining 30%.

The RAC Foundation stresses on this National Work from Home Day that if employers allowed staff to work remotely just one day per week, the difference witnessed on the UK's road networks would yield telling energy and economic savings.