VyraHome – Evaluating employees carbon footprint

VyraHome is a 4-week long research project seeking to quantify the time, money, and carbon savings afforded to Irish employees who work from home during covid-19.

The ongoing study which has so far reached over 100 individuals in different organisations has found that transport emissions from commuting make up the majority percentage of the average employee’s daily footprint.

VyraHome: An ongoing study

The study has successfully quantified the profile of the average Irish worker and has established the average weekly savings from working from home across the 3 key touchpoints to be:

• Time – 3.8 days
• Money – 257 euro
• Carbon – 180kg CO2 eq (2.8 flights from London to Dublin for some context)

Taking a deep dive into the carbon figures to see how findings relate to the countries overall GHG emissions emitted from transport – some interesting insights were uncovered.

By creating different models within the sample group, a prospective carbon savings chart was created that looked at the annual impact of implementing a workweek with 1 work from home day, right up to 5 work from home days per week. (Which has essentially been the case for the majority of business during Covid-19).

The findings are as follows:

• If the average business implemented a 1/5 work from home days per week employees would mitigate 12.2% of their total annual carbon footprint from transport emissions
• If the average business implemented a 2/5 work from home days per week employees would mitigate 31.1% of their total annual carbon footprint from transport emissions.
• If the average business implemented a 3/5 work from home days per week employees would mitigate 49.9% of their total annual carbon footprint from transport emissions.
• If the average business implemented a 4/5 work from home days per week employees would mitigate 68.7% of their total annual carbon footprint from transport emissions.
• If the average business implemented a 5/5 work from home days per week employees would mitigate 87.5% of their total annual carbon footprint from transport emissions.

While the ongoing study pertains specifically to the carbon impact of commuting, the emissions from people working from home are not negligible as there is certainly increased energy, water, and heat usage.

That being said, we are looking specifically at transport emissions, and commuting to work accounts for the bulk of the average person’s travel.

With better benefits and infrastructure for work from home employees, there is no reason why businesses and employees should avoid using integrated work from home schedules as a weapon against carbon emissions reduction in the future.

Beyond emissions – employees will have more time to do what they enjoy while working the same hours and will save enough money annually to pay for a holiday.

About VyraHome

VyraHome is an ongoing research project that seeks to establish the average time, carbon, and financial savings of the average Irish person working from home.

The objective of this report is to look specifically at GHG emissions emitted from transport and compare them to the most recent national figures for transport emissions.

The survey pertains exclusively to the emissions generated by transport during the weekly commute and does not factor in the emissions generated from home utilities (Electricity, heating, water).

By quantifying the survey results of 100 individuals across the service industry in Ireland it was found that the emissions generated from commuting to work constitute a large portion of the average Irish person’s annual carbon footprint from transport emissions.

VyraHome: Background and objectives 

VyraHome is a research project by Irish company Vyra the original goal was to establish the savings made by the average worker during the Covid-19 lockdown and to discover what the general consensus is towards working from home.

The survey has reached individuals in over 12 countries and 3 continents with the predominant response coming from Ireland (over 10 counties). As the project has progressed the focus has shifted objectively towards analysing transport emissions.

The goal of this analysis is to establish what percentage of emissions generated from commuting are directly proportionate to Ireland’s national transport emissions.

The end goal for Vyra as a business is to add value to the current working environment. The results are intended to provide Irish businesses and those working remotely with a prospective insight into remote working as a way to tackle climate change.

More about Irish Tech News and Business Showcase here.
FYI the ROI for you is => Irish Tech News now gets over 1.5 million monthly views, and up to 900k monthly unique visitors, from over 160 countries. We have over 860,000 relevant followers on Twitter on our various accounts & were recently described as Ireland’s leading online tech news site and Ireland’s answer to TechCrunch, so we can offer you a good audience!

Since introducing desktop notifications a short time ago, which notify readers directly in their browser of new articles being published, over 50,000 people have now signed up to receive them ensuring they are instantly kept up to date on all our latest content. Desktop notifications offer a unique method of serving content directly to verified readers and bypass the issue of content getting lost in people’s crowded news feeds.

Drop us a line if you want to be featured, guest post, suggest a possible interview or just let us know what you would like to see more of in our future articles. We’re always open to new and interesting suggestions for informative and different articles.

Contact us, by email, twitter or whatever social media works for you and hopefully, we can share your story too and reach our global audience. We are agile, responsive, quick and talented, we look forward to working with you!

If you would like to have your company featured in the Irish Tech News Business Showcase, get in contact with us at [email protected] or on Twitter: @SimonCocking