Skip to main content

WATCH: Remote work can reduce your carbon footprint and make your life better

The pandemic has radically altered our reality, but remote work has led to some major environmental wins. Photo by Marcus Aurelius / Pexels

Support strong Canadian climate journalism for 2025

Help us raise $150,000 by December 31. Can we count on your support?
Goal: $150k
$32k

On Thursday evening, Canada’s National Observer’s final Conversations event was fittingly forward-looking: how are our new work-from-home routines going to unspool in the future? Data journalist and author Alexandra Samuel had this to say: “I don’t think we’ve seen the end of the office,” she told host and Observer founder and editor-in-chief Linda Solomon Wood.

Watch event:

Alexandra Samuel in conversation with Linda Solomon Wood on June 10, 2021

But working from home has produced three major environmental wins, she said: reduced commuting, reduced office energy consumption and reduced construction of office infrastructure, all of which constitute 10 per cent of Canada’s Paris Accord commitments. The pandemic has radically altered our reality, but Samuel was optimistic that we will reap individual benefits from the shift.

“Part of the beauty of working remotely is it both enables and requires you to kind of follow your bliss a little bit.”

Comments