Businesses that were previously hesitant to let their workers work at home could be more confident after the Covid-19 lockdown has shown many that it is possible, the Sustainable Business Network says.
Speaking this morning to Breakfast, Chief Executive Rachel Brown said there were definitely upsides to the lockdown in terms of the environment, with their own estimates showing New Zealand's carbon emissions may have dropped by up to a quarter.
The largest part of that drop was the huge decrease in people using their cars, and some may now find that they are more willing to do things like use public transport or work from home.
Additionally, employers who were previously hesitant about letting their employees work from home could now be more willing after being shown that it can be done.
"The outcomes [of the lockdown] aren't great socially but the outcomes are great for the planet," Ms Brown said.
"We've already learned some skills - we now know how to use technology, I mean, our organisation was pretty terrible at that before this lockdown time but we've gotten pretty good at it, we've gotten used to it.
"The other thing is that a lot of us are just leaving our cars alone.
"If we can get into this habit of maybe not if we're lucky enough having to go into work everyday maybe we're going to give ourselves permission to work from home a lot more.
"If we do go into work, maybe we've decided that it's time to leave our cars behind - let's use public transport, let's walk or let's cycle as much as we can.
"There's win-wins in all of this, there's environmental benefits, there's health benefits, and financially it's a lot cheaper."
She said the tricky thing will be whether businesses actually trust their employees to work from home.
"At the moment I think we're having to learn to trust each other and I think the productivity is going OK."
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