Thursday April 22nd is Earth Day 2021! 🌍
Earth Day is an annual event that aims to raise awareness about climate change and environmental destruction, while encouraging climate action across the globe.
Here at Housekeep, we’re aware of the challenges facing our planet. And our technology is helping to significantly reduce emissions.
Our technology saves 994 tonnes of CO2 every year - the same as planting 16,436 trees
Our job allocation & route optimisation technology helps find cleaners work that’s close together, and close to home.
Before Housekeep, cleaners had to travel all over London to stay busy - making 3, 4 or 5 long trips each day on trains, tubes & buses, just to get to their customers’ homes.
But that’s not the case anymore.
Our technology pairs customers & cleaners based on proximity and works out the shortest, fastest routes between jobs. As a result, the majority of Housekeep cleaners are able to travel to-and-from jobs in just a few postcode areas, rather than travelling all across the city.
These shorter, denser travel routes mean that cleaners can materially reduce their carbon footprint & meaningfully help the planet.
Overall, this technology has saved cleaners 2214 tonnes of CO2 equivalent (CO2e) emissions!
And it’s increasing year on year - in the last year alone we’ve saved a whopping 994 tonnes of CO2 equivalent emissions!
That’s the same as planting 16,436 trees.1 And the equivalent of driving 2,498,119 miles in the average passenger car.2
What else is Housekeep doing to help the planet?
We encourage all customers with spare key, hidden key or concierge access to opt for a flexible arrival time. With flexible arrival times, our technology can assign even faster, cheaper and more environmentally-friendly routes between jobs.
As well as building job allocation and route optimisation technology, we’ve made it easy for our users to make environmentally-friendly choices around their cleaning. All of our customers are able to choose & supply their own cleaning products for their cleans, with many opting to provide eco-friendly products, such as Method or eCover - and our Housekeepers love using these products.
We also regularly share content with customers & cleaners about the best eco-friendly products on the market. You can read all about our favourite ‘Person, pet & planet-friendly cleaning products’ or our ‘8 best eco friendly cleaning products’ on our blog.
Where can I find out more about Earth Day?
Find out more about Earth Day over on their website, where you can sign up for updates & news about environmental action, and Earth Day’s initiatives.
You can also sign up as an Earth Day Member, which involves an annual donation towards their long-term action to help the planet. Find out more about becoming an Earth Day Member, here.
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How did we work this out?
We’ve looked at where the most cleaners live in London, and where the busiest postcodes for home cleaning are.
From our data - we know that the highest number of Housekeepers live in the E17 postcode area, and the most popular areas for cleaning are the N1, SE1 & E14 postcode areas. It's hard for independent cleaners to fill their schedules - so most of the time they have to travel into the busier areas to find work.
We looked at the route that a cleaner would take to get to three jobs across these areas every single day. Then we researched the distances, and the carbon emissions for each leg of the journey. We looked at the data for both bus & train/tube travel.2
Then we compared this to a typical Housekeep cleaner’s daily journey - which is usually just within a few neighbouring postcodes. We've got the most cleaners & the most customers in London, so there's a strong network effect, and we're able to pair up customers and cleaners on a much more local level.
Here’s what we found when we compared an independent cleaner's travel to a Housekeep cleaner's travel:
We know that most cleaners take the bus to and from work, as this is by far the least expensive way to travel around London. So we’ve compared the bus routes of these two round-trips to calculate the CO2 equivalent emissions that our tech has saved.
This gives us a total weekly saving of 19.12 tonnes of CO2 equivalent emissions.
References
1. https://www.epa.gov/energy/greenhouse-gas-equivalencies-calculator (tree seedlings grown for 10 years)
2. https://www.epa.gov/energy/greenhouse-gas-equivalencies-calculator
3. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/carbon-footprint-travel-mode