We can slash in-person carbon footprints

Peter du ToitI'm the founder of FutureWork IQ where I spend my time assisting businesses to design digital workplaces or “offices in the cloud.” These environments enable companies to allow flexible and remote working for their teams. I also teach the digital literacy, fluency, communication and collaboration skills needed to work in these modern technology-rich workplaces.

If it wasn’t for the pandemic we may have taken much longer to have access to this data. In this research, a whole of host of issues are looked at with regards to in-person conferences (IPC’s) and their virtual equivalents. (VC’s)

Take a look at this finding:

“The cumulative footprints of the >7,000 attendees to 2020 ICLR, AAS and NAMS VCs (1.07 tCO2e) was comparable to the average footprint of a single attendee (combined average of domestic and international) to one of the analysed 2019 IPCs”

That is astounding and it builds on the research that Leonard Burtscher and team have done on this topic too.

We now know for sure that by ending daily commutes for millions of knowledge workers and hosting virtual conferences instead of in-person, we can make radical cuts to workplace generated emissions.

Knowing what faces us, to continue on our previous trajectory with this knowledge is truly indefensible.