How Remote UX Helps the Environment. 🌳

Working remotely as a UX designer is on the rise these days.

And while several people know about some of the benefits that this alternative to working at the office affords in terms of better quality of life for the UX designer, cost savings in terms of money that would be spent commuting and such, time saved commuting, increased productivity, better work-life balance, and several others, much less people know about its benefits for the environment. Apart from the above listed benefits, remote UX also holds several benefits for the environment, as it has a positive impact on it.

In order to understand and have an idea of the positive impact that working remotely as a UX designer, and in other professions to, has on the environment, it is necessary to know the negative impacts and havoc that constant telecommuting wreaks on the environment. And according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), transportation, including the use of vehicles to and from work as is done by those who commute to work every day, is one of the leading causes of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States alone. In fact, greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector only, contributed about 29% of the total volume of greenhouse gas emissions in the USA in the year 2017, which was the largest from any single sector.

How Working as a Remote UX Worker Positively Impacts the Environment.

Working remotely, on the other hand, can help reverse the negative impact that commuting has on the environment. In fact, several studies and assessments support this stance. For instance, data collated during an assessment carried out by Global Workplace Analytics in the year 2017 revealed that people who work from home in the United States of America alone reduced the release of greenhouse gases from telecommuting sources by a volume of about 3.6 million tons. Before this assessment, Xerox, one of the world’s largest corporations reported in 2015 that its employees who worked remotely drove a whopping 92 million fewer miles. This resulted in the saving of about 4.6 million gallons of gas, with the effect that carbon dioxide emissions in the United States was lessened by close to 41,000 metric tons.

From all of these, it is obvious that working remotely, whether as a UX designer, as a Ui designer, or as a Design System’s expert, positively impacts the environment. This is in addition to several other benefits that this particular alternative to working at the office offers such as helping save cost.

And while the largest impact that remote workers have on the environment is the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, there are several other ways in which they positively impact the environment. For instance, the average remote UX designer will use a lesser volume of paper than a commuter. This is because the typical telecommuter relies more on technologies such as email and the cloud.

Also, the typical remote UX worker uses less plastic such as coffee cups lids, beverage bottles, plastic bags, and so on, than the commuter.

In the light of all these, it is quite apparent that remote UX is not only beneficial to the designer and his office, but also to the environment as a whole.