98% of employees’ work-related carbon footprints are generated before they even reach the office. With statistics like that, the environmental reasons to telework are undeniable.

Want some more facts? Here are five more:

• Americans would conserve over 1.2 million gallons of gas per week if only 10% of the nation’s work force teleworked merely one day a week.
• The average passenger car travels 12,500 miles per year – this translates to 606 pounds of carbon monoxide and 10,000 pounds of carbon dioxide emitted annually. However, the absence of one 30 mile round trip per week saves 1.4 pounds of carbon monoxide and 24 pounds of carbon dioxide. Using these estimates, an individual teleworking once a week would save 72.8 pounds of carbon monoxide and 1,248 pounds of carbon dioxide each year.
• About 40% or 33 million Americans with jobs suitable for remote work, these workers could collectively avoid 154 trillion miles of driving a year, saving $110 million a day and 7.5 trillion gallons of gas.
• 12 million employees and 16 million self-employed people who already work at home at least one day a month are saving 24% of guilf oil imports and avoiding production of 33 million metric tons of greenhouse gases a year.

Check back later for more green reasons to telecommute.

Adeel Lari, M.B.A., P.E.
Director of Innovative Financing, Research Fellow, and Teleworker
Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs
University of Minnesota