The pandemic has forced people to work remotely and now as we get back to a new normal, many people are still happy to work away from the office. Due to this more people are travelling around the world, but they are staying in one place for longer, taking the time to take in the culture and the sites around them.
Many nations are finding that these digital nomads are giving a welcome boost in their tourism sectors with places such as Aruba, Barbados, Cape Verde, Croatia, Estonia, Indonesia, Malta and Norway establishing their own digital nomad visas. These visas allow those remotely working to stay and work in one of these areas for up to two years.
There is a controversy, however, to how sustainable these digital nomads or ‘slomads’ are. Even though they are choosing to get involved in green and sustainable projects and when looking for accommodation, they are usually staying in those that are sustainable, overall, they are still choosing to fly to their destinations.
3% of our global greenhouse gas emissions comes from air travel and within six months roughly 4 tonnes of CO2 are emitted by just one individual, digital nomad.
One of the main concerns is that companies are not adding the emissions of their remote workers to their final emission totals, and therefore they are looking greener than they really are.
