The 4 day work week is good for the climate and the environment

The 4 day week can help the environment

The 4 day work week helps people above all else, but when people are happier and healthier, you see a knock-on change in the environment which surrounds them.

There have been numerous studies over the years documenting the effects of reducing work hours and its impact on the environment. A study spanning from 1970 to 2007 looked at 24 countries and discovered that if work hours were reduced by 10 percent, there could be drops in ecological footprint, carbon footprint and carbon dioxide emissions by 12.1 percent, 14.6 percent and 4.2 percent, respectively.

Can the 4 day work week help the environment?

Of course, if people are working a 4 day week then that’s one less day to commute to the office so one less day worth of transport fumes or electricity to generate. For example, Microsoft Japan reported a 23% decrease in electricity costs during their 4 day work week trial.

If organisations adopt a 4 day working week, the daily head count in the office drops by approximately 20% and the number of cars on the road drops by at least a fifth. It’s a win-win-win scenario for employees, employers and the environment.

How does the 4 day work week help the environment?

It may come as a surprise but when the 4 day work week reduces decongestion, it also contributes to productivity.

A 2017 report by the New Zealand Institute for Economic Research on the benefits from Auckland road decongestion says that this decrease in traffic volume would boost productivity by at least NZ$1.3bn per annum (1.4% of Auckland’s GDP), if use of the road network is optimised. Imagine the impact this could have on larger cities such as New York, London or Buenos Aires.

There is in fact a case for work flexibility. “Not going into work could be one of the most environmentally sustainable things you can do as an individual employee.”, says the HR department of UC Davis.

They also outlined that the two main contributors to US greenhouse gas emissions are transportation (29%) and electricity production (28%), with about 135 million Americans commuting to work.

If even half of the time those workers were to ‘work-from-home’ as opposed to go into the office then it would be the environmental equivalent of 10 million cars being removed from the road.

A report by Autonomy, a UK think tank, suggests that a shorter work week could reduce the UK's carbon footprint by up to 127 million tonnes by 2025, roughly equivalent to taking 27 million cars off the road.

Even if workers must be there in-person, having the flexibility to commute to work outside of rush hour can also have benefits for reducing emissions, as less time is spent in transport.

How does a 4 day week affect the environment?

There can also be direct effects to the quality of the air. In València, a city on the east coast of Spain, a 4 day work week trial was carried out by the entire city simultaneously. They coordinated a month of 4 day weeks in April which involved 360,000 people.

The most staggering benefit from this trial was the 58% reduction in nitrous oxide (NO2) in the air, a chemical which causes damage to the earth’s environment.

Transportation makes up 29% of all US greenhouse gas emissions.