Green Working Patterns

Thinking Green, Building Green and Using Green

This paper is about the contribution the way of working may deliver to sustainability. Advocates of “New Ways of Working” claim this to automatically be a sustainable way of working. Opponents point out that it leads to increase of traffic by both car and airplane and that increased power consumption of all accumulated computer centres is responsible for a major part of CO₂ emissions. How can organisations develop green working patterns in a world where everybody is connected to everybody? How do you do it right? To gain insight in the connection of all individual green initiatives concerning the work environment, a new frame of context for both thinking and working is sketched.

If connecting people ultimately leads to contact, connecting will ultimately lead to people meeting each other. Global connectivity creates reasons for people to want to meet each other. A part of those meetings may occur online, through tele-presence, but a part will also lead to actual meetings for which travel is a necessity. On the one hand we discern a decrease in necessity to frequently actually meet one another, on the other hand making new acquaintances worldwide is stimulated which in part leads to a new need for actual meetings.

Is using more space good or bad? The reduction of square footage in use leads to a reduction in CO₂ emission caused by energy consumption for heating and less waste is produced at the end of a lifecycle. But does this also go for occupancy of a high-quality green building, where CO₂ is taken from the air and which is totally self-supporting in using solar and wind energy? Or does increased volume of a building make the inside climate healthier and more stable?

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