Returning to the office: five ways to decarbonise your team’s commute

As the world finally comes to recognise the impact our daily habits have on climate change, many employers are also planning, or have already returned to the workplace. These daily commutes contribute 18bn kg of CO2 emissions annually - 5% of the UK’s total emissions.

Unlike Scope 1 and 2 emissions, which require mandatory reporting, commuting emissions remain unchecked and unchallenged rendering net zero a pipe dream for many employers across the UK.

Supporting our teams to make sustainable choices is critical to meeting our net zero goals – because if we don’t, our children will never forgive us. Here’s some actions you can take in supporting your workforce to make greener choices, reduce commuting emissions and mitigate the impacts of climate change.

Remote and hybrid working

Working from home seems like the obvious answer to reduce commuter emissions – and indeed, it has shown us what’s possible in terms of emissions reduction. As a catalyst of commuting behaviour change, the pandemic showed it’s not always necessary to make regular and repeated journeys to and from work. It also demonstrated the environmental savings when those trips cease. Researchers from the University of East Anglia estimated national lockdowns reduced global carbon emissions by 2.4bn tonnes in 2020.

However, 18 months on, businesses of all sizes and sectors are starting to experience the limitations of working with purely remote teams. There’s no denying that we have the tools and technology to work collaboratively when we’re apart, but the networking, social and wellbeing benefits of working together in person cannot be so easily manufactured.

A YouGov poll from April this year found 1 in 4 businesses will continue to allow their teams to work from home at least one day a week. Adopting a hybrid approach allows you to retain the productivity, flexibility and environmental benefits of remote working, whilst safeguarding engagement and cultural cohesion associated with working in the office. Allowing your teams to work from home for even just part of the week can dramatically reduce your organisations commuter emissions long term. If your teams must travel to work, as an employer, you have a responsibility to make sustainable commuting the easiest, cheapest and most viable option.

Promote active travel

The Department for Transport’s Decarbonisation Plan recently announced “walking and cycling should be the natural first choice for short journeys”. For those who can, it should be. Active travel is good for everyone. It’s easy, accessible and a zero emissions mode of transport that costs nothing and results in a range of health and wellbeing benefits. An Australian study also found that employees who commute to work by foot are more productive than those who travel by other means.

Post code analysis of over half a million individual employee post found that 40% of employees could walk or cycle to work. So, why don’t they? Often, it’s a lack of infrastructure that puts employees off from even trying to commute this way.

To make active travel a desirable choice for employees, you have to address the reasons why they wouldn’t. Are there adequate shower and changing facilitates in your workplace? Is there somewhere safe and secure to store their bicycle? Can they afford the upfront costs associated with getting a bike and the associated gear? Having the right infrastructure, facilitates and support, such as cycle to work schemes, quickly turn short journey drivers into active travel advocates. We have the data to prove it!

Public transport

Proximity fears around shared transport continue to linger, with many people eschewing trains, trams and busses in favour of driving alone. While there’s been great efforts by public transport providers to reassure users of their safety, second hand car sales have experienced a sharp rise.

Employers with well connected services have a duty to encourage and support their teams use public transport to minimise their environmental impact of the commute. Don’t have a well-connected service? Why not try engaging with your local operation? Small tweaks to service times or shift patterns can increase the viability of using these services for some staff. Local operators are usually very receptive to discussions when it comes to increasing the patronage of their services. If you don’t already have it, introducing flexible working is an easy way to eliminate fears around being late should the worst happen.

You can also incentivise teams to utilise public transport with paid for travel cards, season ticket loans, and other localised discount schemes. It’s valuable to communicate the benefits of utilising public transport, such as less stress, quicker journey times via priority lanes and reduced travel costs such as car maintenance, parking and fuel – a frustration which may feel particularly poignant after the recent fuel shortage!

Car sharing

A car with two people in is twice as efficient and half as expensive as it is with one – even more so if you can fill the other seats (of which there are 47m empty on our roads every rush hour).

The Government’s Covid guidance around car sharing has recently relaxed, dictating that people who regularly car share isn’t required to wear masks if they don’t wish to. This is great news for large employers, many of whom have hundreds of people making the same journeys every day. A branded car share scheme is a particularly good option for organisations who are underserved by public transport and/or have limited parking. Having dedicated parking for sharers is a great incentive for encouraging people to share a lift to reduce their environmental impact.

Operating a car share scheme rather than informal sharing offers real value when it comes to adapting to the ‘new normal’. Changing shift patterns or hybrid working needn’t be an obstacle to reducing commuting emissions if you can connect with colleagues across the business through an app on your smartphone.

Measure and manage your impact

Reducing emissions through sustainable travel policy and initiatives are an applaudable and necessary steps on the road to net zero. However, these goals are ultimately unachievable if you can’t track and measure your progress.

As we’ve seen with Scope 1 & 2 emissions, what can be measured, can be managed. This is why one of our great efforts as an organisation has been to pioneer ACEL (Average Commuter Emissions Level). ACEL is the only standardised methodology for benchmarking and comparing commuter emissions. It allows organisations to track their progress and measure the effectiveness of sustainable travel initiatives.

Quick to calculate and easy to understand – the lower the ACEL, the closer you are to Zero Carbon Commuting. Organisations across the public and private sector are using ACEL to set stretching but achievable emissions reduction targets feeding into the wider net zero goals. All you need to calculate your organisations ACEL is your latest travel survey results. If you don’t have these to hand, you can use this calculator to view and tweak national averages data to get an idea of the size and scope of your commuter emissions challenges – and how you can solve them. We’ve calculated the ACEL of every region in the UK, how does yours compare?