Environment: what is the impact of hybrid work?

Concern for the environment has become a subject increasingly discussed by people and also by companies (thankfully). After all, we already know the impact that our actions are having on the environment and that the probability is that this scenario will continue to worsen over the years.

Today, there are laws and policies that companies can adopt to minimize the impact on the environment, such as recycling, conscious consumption of water and energy, more sustainable production processes, social responsibility actions, among many others. In addition, some processes also generate an impact on sustainability – this is the case of adopting the hybrid work model. This is due to the reduction of pollution caused by commuting to the workplace and the use of polluting products, as work spaces are smaller.

Sustainability through displacement

To have a basis for this impact, we simulated some scenarios in which a person needs to commute to work using two modes of transportation, by bus or by car, with an average commuting of 30 kilometers per day.

Based on this simulation, the first scenario shows a person who commutes to work by bus daily, emitting about 0.211 tons of CO2 per year. In the second scenario, through car locomotion (the average consumption of an economical gasoline car with up to 1.4 power was considered), the emission becomes 1,644 tons of CO2 per year.

One way to offset this emission of the amount of carbon (tCO2) is through the planting of trees, that is, a calculation that equates the annual consumption of a person with the amount of trees that need to be planted in the same period. Based on the simulation above, the annual displacement of a person using a bus is equivalent to one tree planted per year, while per car is equivalent to five trees. That is, considering the same displacement, the car becomes more harmful to the environment.

This simulation was performed only for a single person, but in a real scenario, considering the number of employees in a company, this impact is much more expressive and harmful to the environment.

With the adoption of hybrid work, this carbon emission to the environment can be much lower. Keeping the same scenarios as in our simulation and adopting the hybrid model with a person going to the office once a week, the number of kilometers driven decreases, considerably reducing carbon emissions, either by bus or by car. The emission is now 0.038 tCO2 from buses, which does not account for one tree per year, or in another perspective it would be a tree every 5 years, and per car, the emission becomes 0.299 tCO2, falling to a tree per year.

Sustainability through the reduction of environments

In addition to commuting, other factors related to the work environment are important to consider, such as the use of cleaning products. Some products are not biodegradable and end up polluting the environment by preventing the oxygenation of the water, which affects the ecosystem. This is the case of products such as chlorine, detergents, disinfectants, among others.

Hybrid work in this case also contributes to sustainability, as it allows for the reduction of work spaces. That is, the building, allocating the same number of employees, can be smaller, which generates less use of cleaning products.

Therefore, hybrid work is also an effective way to contribute to the sustainability of the environment, among many other advantages.