My old computer sounds like it’s about to take flight these days. You know that wheezing, grinding noise when the fan’s working overtime? I’ve been listening to it for weeks now, watching my poor machine struggle through endless video calls while I sit here in what used to be the guest bedroom, now my makeshift office. Got one of those electricity meters installed last month – took me three tries and nearly blew a fuse, but that’s another story – and I nearly choked when I saw the numbers. Working from home was supposed to be better for the environment, wasn’t it? So why are my energy bills higher than they’ve ever been?
When the whole world shifted to remote work back in 2020, I remember feeling cautiously optimistic about one thing at least. Maybe accidentally we’d stumbled onto something good for the planet. Those early months were remarkable from an environmental standpoint – cleaner air, less traffic, wildlife wandering into empty city streets like they were reclaiming territory that had been stolen from them. For the first time in decades, you could actually see the mountains from downtown Los Angeles. It felt like we were getting a glimpse of what the world might look like if we weren’t all rushing around so much.
But here’s the thing about environmental solutions – they’re never as straightforward as they seem at first glance.
I’ve been wrestling with this question for three years now, trying to figure out whether my own work-from-home setup is actually better or worse for the planet than my old routine of commuting to that insurance office downtown every day. The answer, frustratingly, seems to be both. Remote work is simultaneously one of the best things we’ve accidentally done for the environment and also a whole new set of problems we’re just starting to understand.
Let’s start with the obvious wins, because they’re real and they’re significant. The biggest one is all the driving we’re not doing. I used to make a forty-five minute round trip every day, sometimes longer when traffic was bad. That’s roughly 8,000 miles a year just getting to and from work in a car that was definitely not winning any fuel efficiency awards. When I calculated what I was no longer putting into the atmosphere, it came out to about three tons of carbon dioxide annually. That’s substantial. Multiply that by millions of people who no longer have daily commutes, and you’re talking about a real reduction in transportation emissions.
Then there’s all the energy that office buildings aren’t using anymore. Those big commercial spaces with their massive heating and cooling systems running all day whether anyone’s in the building or not. Fluorescent lights illuminating empty conference rooms. Elevators running up and down mostly empty shafts. The waste was staggering when you really thought about it. All those resources being used to maintain spaces that were often half-empty anyway.
But – and this is where it gets complicated – we’ve essentially created millions of individual offices that all need their own heating, cooling, and power. During the winter months, I’m heating this entire house just for me during the day instead of sharing the energy costs with fifty coworkers in a more efficiently designed building. That first winter working from home, my heating bills went up forty percent. Forty percent! I was wearing sweaters indoors and still using more energy than before.
There’s also the equipment situation. The office had one large, efficient printer that everyone shared. One copier. Shared computers and screens and all the infrastructure that makes work possible. Now I’ve got my own printer that I use maybe twice a month, two extra monitors, an external hard drive that runs constantly, and who knows what else plugged in and drawing power all day long. Every remote worker has had to recreate their own version of office equipment, and most of it sits idle most of the time.
And I haven’t even mentioned the packaging waste. Good lord, the packages. When I worked at the office, lunch usually meant walking to the deli down the street or bringing something from home. Now it’s so easy to just order food delivery, and every meal comes wrapped in layers of plastic and cardboard and those little containers that you can’t recycle anywhere. My trash output doubled in the first year of working from home, mostly from all the convenience foods and deliveries that replaced my old routines.
The technology part is more complicated than I expected too. All those video calls use enormous amounts of data, which has to be processed and stored somewhere, which requires energy. Lots of energy, apparently. I had no idea that leaving my camera on during meetings was contributing to carbon emissions, but it turns out those data centers that make video conferencing possible consume massive amounts of electricity. Who knew?
So what’s a person supposed to do with all this? I’ve been experimenting for three years now, trying to figure out how to make working from home as environmentally friendly as possible. Some things have worked better than others, and I’ve made plenty of mistakes along the way.
The biggest impact came from improving my home’s energy efficiency. I finally bit the bullet last year and had proper insulation installed in the walls and attic. The upfront cost was significant – more than I wanted to spend – but my heating and cooling costs dropped immediately. The investment paid for itself within eighteen months, and now I’m comfortable working without wearing three layers of clothing indoors. Before that, I tried smaller fixes like thick curtains, weather stripping around windows, and those foam strips that go under doors. Every little bit helped.
I’ve gotten strategic about heating and cooling too. Instead of heating the whole house during work hours, I got a small space heater for just my office. It uses way less energy than running the central heat all day, and I can keep the rest of the house cooler when I’m the only one home. In summer, I position my desk to catch cross-breezes and use a small fan instead of air conditioning whenever possible. Sometimes I’m a little too warm or too cool, but that seems like a reasonable trade-off for using less energy.
The technology choices matter more than I realized. I switched to a laptop from a desktop computer because it uses significantly less power. When I need larger screens for certain projects, I make sure they’re energy-efficient models and I turn them completely off when I’m not using them – not just sleep mode, but actually off. I held onto my old printer for years thinking it was better to use things until they completely died, but eventually I had to admit it was so inefficient that replacing it was actually the more environmentally responsible choice.
I’ve changed how I handle video calls too. Camera off when I don’t absolutely need it on, audio-only calls when possible, and I’ve gotten much more comfortable with just talking instead of feeling like we need to see each other’s faces for every conversation. Honestly, most meetings work just fine without video, and some are actually better because people seem more focused when they’re not worried about how they look on screen.
The food situation required some adjustment. I was ordering delivery way more often than I ever ate out when I worked at the office, partly out of convenience and partly because being home alone all day made me crave more variety in my routine. Now I plan my work-from-home meals the same way I used to pack lunches – preparation on weekends, simple ingredients, minimal packaging. My compost bin gets the scraps instead of everything going to the landfill wrapped in plastic containers.
One thing I didn’t expect was how working from home would change my need for social interaction. I found myself driving to coffee shops or meeting friends for lunch much more often than I used to, essentially creating new transportation that didn’t exist when I had built-in social interaction at the office. Now I try to be more intentional about it – walking to nearby places when I need a change of scenery, or coordinating with friends who also work from home so we can share a workspace occasionally.
I’ve also had to think about batching activities differently. When I do need to go into town for errands or meetings, I try to combine as many tasks as possible into one trip instead of making multiple separate journeys throughout the week. It requires more planning than my old routine, but it reduces the overall driving.
The digital clutter aspect was something I never considered initially. All those emails and files and photos stored in the cloud require energy to maintain, so I’ve become more diligent about deleting things I don’t actually need and being selective about what gets saved versus what gets discarded immediately. It’s a small thing, but it adds up when you multiply it by millions of people doing the same thing.
I’d be lying if I said I’ve figured it all out. Just last week I realized I’d had a power strip plugged in for months that wasn’t actually powering anything – just sitting there drawing electricity for no reason because I’d rearranged my setup and forgotten about it. And I still struggle with the balance between being comfortable enough to work effectively and not using excessive energy to maintain that comfort.
But overall, my carbon footprint working from home is definitely lower than it was when I commuted every day, even accounting for the increased energy use at home. The elimination of that daily drive makes the biggest difference, despite all the other factors that have increased my environmental impact. It’s not perfect, but it’s progress, and it’s given me more control over the choices I make about energy use than I ever had working in someone else’s building.
The key seems to be being intentional about it instead of just assuming that working from home is automatically better for the environment. It can be, but it requires some thought and effort to make sure you’re actually reducing your impact rather than just shifting it from one place to another. And honestly, that’s true of most environmental choices – they work better when you pay attention to them rather than just hoping for the best.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go figure out why that computer fan is making an even more alarming noise than usual. At this rate, it might actually achieve liftoff.
