Ever wondered how much your team’s daily commute contributes to our carbon footprint? Out of pure curiosity—and to test whether we truly practice what we preach—we decided to calculate our team travel carbon footprint. Based on our calculations, at approximately 5,500 kg CO2 e/year, our nine-person team’s footprint from commuting to the office is roughly equivalent to the carbon footprint of less than five team members who would be commuting/driving 10km alone by private car to come to the office 5 times per week.
What did we do to get to this estimate?
In simple terms, we multiplied each member’s annual commuting distance by the emission factor of their chosen mode of transport. This is in line with the methodology outlined in the European Environment Agency’s air pollutant emission inventory guidebook (Tier 2 algorithm) and the Greenhouse Gas Protocal’s Scope 3 calculation guidance[1]. We started by designing a simple online survey to gather data on how far, how often, and using which mode(s) each team member commutes to the office. Using Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) emission factors for each mode, we calculated the total carbon footprint for every team member[2].
Key tips: when estimating annual office trips, don’t forget to subtract holidays and personal leave, and ensure you’re using travel distances of the route taken – not a straight line from home to destination. Also, be reminded to multiply your distance by 2 to account for both trips made from and to the office.
What did we find?
How do we know this makes a big impact? We compared our current business-as-usual (BAU) scenario with two hypothetical alternatives:
- Our entire team commuting exclusively by gasoline cars
- Our entire team commuting exclusively using public buses
The bar graph highlights the stark difference – switching entirely to public transport would slice our emissions to a fifth, while relying solely on gasoline cars would increase our footprint by 50%. This visual comparison underscores just how significant our commuting choices can be.
Unsurprisingly, the primary driver of carbon footprint is the mode of transport, followed closely by the distance between a team member’s residence and the office. While we anticipated these factors to have the greatest influence on total emissions, it was validating to see the data support it.
What did surprise us, however, was the inverse relationship between the frequency of commutes and emissions. Interestingly, team members who commute more often tend to have lower emissions. Why? At TfC, those with fewer commute days often rely on high-emission modes like private cars, whereas frequent commuters typically use more sustainable options such as walking or cycling. This makes sense—those who live nearby, naturally go to the office more often and avoid high-polluting modes. Of course, it would be ideal if we could all simply move closer to our workplaces, or work remotely more often, but we know that’s not an easy solution. So, what can we (and you) do to shrink our footprint even further?
What can we do?
As a small company with just a dozen of team members, optimizing our commutes might not make a huge dent in emissions. But for larger organizations with hundreds or even thousands of employees navigating Cairo (or any other city’s) transport system, the potential impact is massive. In fact, as our study showed, moving to public transport has the potential to reduce emissions by almost 80% of the total footprint.
Encouraging public transport use is always a great starting point, but let’s face it—sometimes the lack of connectivity or long travel times make it impractical. So, what other options are available? Carpooling! It’s a simple yet effective way to reduce emissions, ease congestion, and even save on fuel costs. You could take it a step further as a business owner by incentivizing carpoolers—think lower parking fees or reserved spaces for those sharing rides.
Disclaimer: A few assumptions were made to arrive at those calculations:
- Number of working days a year
- Number of users per mass transport mode (to calculate emission factor per user of mode)
[1] For more information refer to https://ghgprotocol.org
[2] For more information, please refer to (Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) )