Using eLearning To Reduce Carbon Footprint
Global warming is a ubiquitous and pervasive problem, which leads to staggering negative impacts on the whole world, which are not just limited to the rapid and widespread increase in temperatures all around the globe. Global warming also leads to an accelerated rise in sea levels, resulting in increased coastal flooding. What’s more, it also brings with it extended wildfire seasons, which leads to more frequent and larger spreading wildfires in forest areas. If that wasn’t enough, global warming has also led to an increase in the intensity of hurricanes.
The main cause of global warming is Carbon Dioxide (CO2), which is a greenhouse gas which traps heat in our atmosphere. Organizations all around the world are taking initiatives to reduce their carbon footprint by reducing CO2 emissions that arise from their operations, as well as going paperless to reduce deforestation and the cutting of trees. Although there are a number of ways organizations can reduce their carbon footprint, it is never enough, and organizations must increasingly become environment-friendly and conscious of their impact on the environment if we as a race can survive. Digitally transforming corporate learning is one of the ways through which corporate organizations can reduce their carbon footprint, and can have a substantial impact if the mass of organizations in the world transition from traditional training to eLearning. In this article, let us have a look at the ways eLearning can help you save the planet.
1. Eliminates The Need For Paper
Each ream of paper used at an organization releases more than 2 kilograms of CO2 into the environment. Each ream weighs around 2.5 kilograms on average, and globally we use around 300 million tons of paper each year. Thus, you can imagine the amount of carbon dioxide that is released each year in the atmosphere. eLearning eliminates the need for paper used in learning material like textbooks or quizzes, tests, syllabi, or assignment sheets, doing away with the amount of paper consumed in an organization for the purposes of learning.
2. Eliminates The Need For Transportation
Traditional classroom sessions are usually conducted in a seminar hall or auditorium of some sort, which means that each employee has to travel to that place in order to attend the sessions, which leads to them using some form of transportation like cars, buses or motorbikes. All these forms of transportation emit CO2 in huge amounts. In fact, one-third of all greenhouse gas emissions in the world are from vehicles. Using eLearning, training can be delivered to employees directly on their smartphones, personal computers, laptops or tablets, which eliminates the need for them to travel anywhere, thus eliminating the carbon emissions that would have resulted through it.
3. Eliminates Excessive Consumption Of Energy Resources
Large seminar halls or auditoriums or even conference rooms inside an organization where traditional classroom training is held consume a lot of energy through computers, projectors, and smart boards, in addition to the energy consumed by lighting and air conditioning (which also harms the environment). All this energy requires the burning of fossil fuels to be created, which releases millions of metric tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. eLearning can save energy and thus reduce carbon emissions by eliminating the need for seminar halls, auditoriums or conference rooms to train and develop employees. Also, eLearning can be scaled to serve nearly limitless numbers of students with a minimal impact on total energy expenditure and consumed resources (as an eLearning class occupies virtually the same amount of server space for one student as it does for one hundred). It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that reduced energy expenditure means reduced costs for the organization.
There are a number of other things organizations can do if they want to reduce their carbon footprint, including replacing old computers, technology and appliances with more energy-efficient models, encouraging employees to reduce their computer screen’s brightness level, and ensuring that it goes into sleep mode when not in use, in addition to shutting off devices when not in use. With the problem that our world faces, isn’t it our duty to adopt environmentally-conscious practices? The answer is obviously yes, and each organization must play its part in saving our planet.
Originally published at cblpro.com.
