From House Beautiful
There are a ton of reasons (and excuses) to stay home from work: If you’re sick, have a doctor’s appointment, or if you need to take a day off for your mental health, just to name a few. But what if not heading to work also has an effect on the entire planet? What if it might actually help us save it?
In a study conducted and published by Autonomy, called “The Ecological Limits of Work: On Carbon Emissions, Carbon Budgets, And Working Time,” greenhouse gas emissions were compared against the number of hours the average person works each week to see what our planet could actually afford to handle in terms of these harmful emissions-and the results were pretty wild.
“The actual sustainable work week, based on today’s levels of productivity and carbon intensity, would likely need to be well below 10 hours per week per person, even in relatively carbon-efficient economies,” the study recommends.
Photo credit: Hearst Owned
While that seems like an impossible option (we all have to make money somehow, after all), commuting less might actually be the way to go when trying to save the planet and reduce the effects of climate change. If we cut our work hours by just 1 percent, the study states, we could decrease our carbon footprint by 1.46 percent-and every little bit of help counts.
The study itself realizes that shortening the work week to 10 hours isn’t exactly feasbile, but creating jobs that benefit our environment and fight climate change-like green jobs and service professions-are a step in the right direction.
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