What is the impact of remote work on our greenhouse gas emissions? It seems logical to think that this impact is positive, but it is not so simple!

That's why we have created a calculator to have a first idea of the impact on the CO2 emissions of a company and to make its remote way of working evolve.

We had the idea of this calculator when we saw more and more companies taking as an example startups that are fully remote, that have employees all over the world and that organize "team retreats" (seminars) gathering all the employees once or twice a year in a heavenly place.
This model does not correspond to what we believe to be a modern and environmentally friendly company: does it make sense to move several hundred people by airplane over a long distance when we have to limit our CO2 emissions?

A little Excel helped us realize that just because people don't take their car every day to go to work doesn't justify flying to the other side of the world!
Result:

+48% CO2 emissions!!!

It seemed so crazy to us and at the same time so simple to obtain as a result that we thought that there were many other things to evaluate and reveal with a small tool available to all.

Here is the result of the calculator which compares a "traditional" company (1 day of remote work / week) vs an international startup in full remote which makes 1 seminar / year in a place far from the majority of its employees:

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After this first example, we had fun comparing other situations, and we can say that the results are not always what you expect!

We will detail our conclusions on some of the scenarios we have modeled in other articles in the coming days but you can already test your own scenarios and share your conclusions by using the calculator :

Please feel free to send us your comments and ideas for improvement by filling out this form or by clicking on the button at the top of the calculator page.

At Dr. Remote, we believe that working remotely can have enormous benefits on many aspects of our lives. But for these benefits to be real, it is necessary to organize this way of working as a whole and not to improvise. Otherwise, it creates benefits on one side and problems on the other.

A real transformation of the way a company works is one that takes into account the employees, the company, the society and the environment!