The fight over 'return to office' policies has a dirty downside

Push to end work-from-home could make climate crisis worse

Rachel really hates sitting in traffic. Knowing she's about to spend up to an hour and a half in her car that day staring at taillights in front of her makes it all the more difficult to wake up in the morning.

She had a remote position over the past few years, but landed a new job in February at a nonprofit, which came with a catch: The job required her to make the hike to its Silver Spring, Maryland, office at least two days a week — forcing her to commute 30 to 45 minutes each way. 

Rachel, who was granted a pseudonym to speak freely about her employer's policy, is among millions of workers getting back into the swing of commuting thanks to return-to-office mandates. Like many of them, Rachel said she doesn't see the point. But it's not just the time suck that bothers her, it's the environmental impact of her new routine.

"I get kind of furious when I drive to work and see the road choked with traffic," Rachel told me. "It's incredibly harmful to the environment. And offices also generate so much waste, like paper and plastic cups and utensils." 

Rachel's concerns about the environment have been largely ignored in the battle over return-to-office mandates — at least publicly. CEOs at Amazon, Google, and JPMorgan Chase argue that in-person collaboration and random watercooler conversations keep people more engaged. Opponents of the shift have emphasized the ability of workers to be more productive when they set their own schedule. But grappling with the broader planetary effects of these decisions is a failure on the part of corporations, James Elfer, the founder of More Than Now, told me. 

"It's shocking that this isn't part of the conversation, especially at companies that claim to care about sustainability," Elfer, whose firm conducts behavioral-science experiments to improve workplaces, said. "It's a missed opportunity to explore an employer's colossal influence on our behavior." 

Whether mandatory return-to-office policies will make the climate crisis worse is an important question, especially as scientists predict that 2023 will be the hottest year on record. Transportation accounts for about 15% of greenhouse-gas emissions warming the planet, with gas-powered cars, trucks, and buses contributing an outsize amount. But determining whether working from an office is worse for the planet isn't that simple. There are myriad factors that could tip the scales the other way, such as where people live, the amount of energy people use at home, the food they eat, the things they buy, and the extra trips they take. We are in the midst of a major upheaval in how people work, and Fortune 500 companies employ nearly 30 million people around the world. Failing to find a balance between boosting productivity at the office and protecting the planet risks making the crisis worse.

"Collectively, these decisions mean millions of employees working in profoundly different ways," Elfer said. "The lack of attention feels irresponsible."

Commuting cost

In the US, the transportation sector belches out the most greenhouse gases of any industry, and passenger vehicles are largely responsible, generating the equivalent of 374 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2021. While all that driving isn't just from commuting, about three-fourths of the 154 million Americans who do travel to work go by car. On average, they spend nearly an hour on the road each day, according to US Census data from 2021. The trends are similar in the UK, where cars and taxis account for half of the transportation sector's emissions, and some 68% percent of people who commute to work did so by car for an average travel time of one hour a day. 

So it stands to reason that cutting out commutes would help keep the air cleaner. Ty Colman, a cofounder and the chief revenue officer at Optera, a carbon-accounting firm that helps organizations quantify their emissions, said that in general, a fully remote company with no offices has the lowest impact-per-employee per year, at less than 1 metric ton of carbon-dioxide equivalent. That includes the uptick in energy used to power computers, keep the lights on, and maintain a comfortable temperature at home. Employees with a hybrid-work policy that allows them to be remote three days a week emit about 1.4 metric tons per year, which increases to 1.7 metric tons under a fully in-office policy. The firm's method is based on the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, the most widely used standard among organizations, cities, and countries to track their emissions. The company adjusted a wide array of variables to see how different behaviors affected the amount of emissions per employee, Colman said, and fully in-office always produced the highest emissions unless a large majority of people made their commute by public transit — then a hybrid schedule could actually have a greater environmental impact. 

The International Energy Agency in 2020 found that for people who commute more than 4 miles per day by car, their emissions would decrease if they worked from home. Overall, if people who can telework did so just one day a week, it would cut 24 million metric tons of emissions a year — equivalent to what the Greater London area produces each year. The IEA said that represented a "notable decline" but was small in the context of the amount emissions must drop to meet global climate goals. 

"I get kind of furious when I drive to work and see the road choked with traffic. It's incredibly harmful to the environment."

The onset of the pandemic in 2020 provided a real-world opportunity to research what happens when millions of people stop commuting and work from home. Ralf Martin, an associate professor at Imperial College Business School in London, did just that. His team collected smart-meter data from a representative sample of 1,164 UK households and surveyed 452 of them about how their daily patterns changed during July and August 2020. Most people reported a commute of fewer than 20 miles and traveled by car. On average, they worked from home three days a week and commuted two, as some were essential workers and had to go in. Even as people sat at home charging laptops and taking video calls, overall household emissions dropped by 33% — electricity use went up by 6%, while gas consumption decreased by 9.5%. That rise in electricity didn't generate as big a spike in emissions as expected, Martin said, for two reasons: First, demand was more spread out during the day. In the pre-COVID world, household emissions were clustered in the early morning and the evenings, forcing more inefficient oil and gas plants to come online to meet the spikes in demand.

"During these morning and evening peaks is when energy generation is the dirtiest," Martin said. "The high demand leads to some of the more marginal, dirtier power plants getting switched on so the carbon intensity of the power grid goes up."

The second factor was a bit more odd: Since people weren't going into the office and spending time around colleagues, they probably care less about hygiene. "It's also possible people didn't shower so much," Martin added. "That's less energy for heating water." 

Even though the study only covered the early part of the pandemic, it illustrated how a shift away from office work can have some positive effects for the planet. But since we are no longer in lockdown, global emissions have rebounded to higher than pre-pandemic levels because people are driving and flying again, the IEA said. The added trouble is that many people used the pandemic as a reason to move to the suburbs. That potentially means longer and more expensive commutes as employers demand people be in the office again — making a strong case for more flexibility to work from home.

"The bottom line here is that the immediate effect was this big savings in emissions," Martin said. "But what seems to be emerging is a danger that transport emissions are actually increasing as people move further away from their place of work and engage in hybrid working."

Keeping the lights on

Despite the intuitive nature of the argument, most experts said that sending everyone back to home offices is not a silver bullet for combating the climate crisis. If a person's commute was shorter than 4 miles or they relied on public transportation, the IEA report found, teleworking could actually increase their emissions because of the extra energy used at home. Other behaviors make a difference in this calculation, as well: What time of year is it? During the winter, energy use tends to be higher as people turn on the heat, though in the US it's actually higher in the summer because air conditioning is so common. Are people wasting more food or running their electronic devices unnecessarily? Running more errands? Taking more weekend trips?

In 2021, More Than Now outlined a road map for how companies could determine the optimal mix of commuting and WFH for their employees. The firm's initial research found that employees' net-sustainability impact depended on travel, the energy and digital devices they use, waste management, and local infrastructure.

"Each was dramatically influenced by remote work and had pros and cons when it comes to our environmental footprint," Elfer said. "There was no clear answer to whether work from home was better or worse for the environment in general terms."

It's shocking that this isn't part of the conversation, especially at companies that claim to care about sustainability

Tailoring people's behavior to ensure that working from home actually cuts emissions can be hard, especially without robust data from employees on how they spend their time. Even without this information, some institutions are encouraging people to be more sustainable at home, including American University in Washington, DC. Megan Litke, the director of sustainability at American, said her office conducts a survey each year of faculty and staff to track their commuting habits. However, they haven't found a way to accurately measure what people are doing at home.

"We've taken the approach that we don't need a firm number to start taking action on it," Litke said. "We provide people with a list of actions they can do, broken out by morning routine, lunch break, and afternoon stretch."

A Green Home Guide suggests people avoid plastic K-Cups for coffee and eat meat- and dairy-free meals to lower their carbon footprint, and it offers tips for recycling, composting, and buying green cleaning products. Energy-saving techniques are also included, such as putting desks near a window to take advantage of daylight and setting electronic devices to go into sleep mode after a certain window of time.

"It's important to recognize that working from home isn't a perfect environmental solution," Litke said. "We have to think about it holistically."

Head in the sand

While scientists and experts are trying to find the perfect mix of work-from-home and in-office time to help the planet, CEOs seem less concerned. Many companies — even ones that say they are dedicated to helping the planet — don't seem interested in trying to figure out the answer, Efler said. More Than Now published its road map in 2021 in hopes that companies would want to partner to study the trade-offs, but in the two years since his organization started looking into the issue, it's been mostly crickets from the corporate world.

Operta's Colman said that companies are quietly considering "what emissions will be relative to various work policies." It may not be center stage in the debate because employees' commutes can represent a small portion of a company's overall emissions, Colman said, but Optera, which has clients including Target, Dell, and Williams-Sonoma, has run the numbers for dozens of companies. 

Given the importance of the question at hand and the volume of the environmental promises made by many large corporations, the relative hush when it comes to commutes is perplexing.

Insider asked Amazon, Apple, Google, and JPMorgan Chase — all of which have ambitious climate goals — whether they considered the potential environmental trade-offs in crafting their return-to-office mandates. All declined to comment or didn't respond. In their latest sustainability reports, Amazon, Apple, and Google account for employee commutes in their overall carbon footprint. JPMorgan does not. Google said commuting and teleworking contributes 2% of the total emissions created by the company. Amazon said it counts emissions from company-provided shuttles and certain employer-subsidized transit but doesn't break out a specific total. Apple said employee commute and business travel accounts for 0.5% of its emissions, which it offsets by purchasing carbon credits from projects that protect and restore nature. While these numbers may seem small, they do add up, and optimizing how employees commute could be an easy win for companies that ostensibly care about the future of the planet. 

It's important to recognize that working from home isn't a perfect environmental solution. We have to think about it holistically.

Schneider Electric, which makes hardware and software to manage energy in buildings, is focused on making its own offices as sustainable as possible and offering employees flexibility to work from home. Tony Johnson, the director of hub sites and workplace strategy, said these efforts began around 2015. Since then, Schneider Electric has shrunk its offices from 300 to about 200 in North America. 

"We recognized that not everybody wants or needs to be in the office every day of the week," he said. "At the same time, it's hard to build relationships that drive innovation virtually." 

Schneider asks its 35,000 employees in North America to be in the office at least two days a week and is pursuing electric vehicles for those who regularly drive to meet with customers. The company's 2022 sustainability report shows that emissions from its own offices and manufacturing sites around the world are decreasing, while emissions from employee commuting increased. Both categories account for a small portion of Schneider Electric's overall carbon footprint.    

"This is a complicated problem, and we're learning as we go," Johnson said. "Several years ago, no one was talking about how their vendors were impacting the planet. Now, we're trying to make sure our furniture supplier recycles or refurbishes." 

For Rachel, finding another job that is fully remote would be ideal. She already negotiated with her current employer to be in the office two days a week — as opposed to five — and doesn't think they will budge any further. That's left Rachel thinking about the ripple effects of commuting to work — the environmental impact, the weight on her mental health, even the wear and tear on her cars and the roads. For all these reasons, she's determined that going into the office simply isn't worth it. 

"I think we go in because our CEO likes to have people to talk to," she said. "I don't think our presence is generating amazing ideas or networking. My boss just likes a more traditional work environment."

Catherine Boudreau is senior sustainability reporter at Insider.