NEBOSH digital assessments: environmental benefits
Thursday, 1 October 2020
Over 8,000 people took the first NEBOSH digital assessment in August 2020.
Not only have our learners been able to stay safe while achieving their NEBOSH qualifications but we’ve reduced our environmental impact as well!
Learners did not have to travel to a separate venue to take their exam and NEBOSH did not have to print and post the question papers to exam venues and Examiners. Our Green Team have done the maths and the first digital assessment saved:
- 330,910 airmiles
Equivalent to travelling over 13 times around the equator. - 150 tonnes of CO2
It would take over 74,000 trees to absorb this CO2 in one year. - 161,680 sheets of paper
Equal to 19 trees.
How we worked things out
Over 8,000 learners registered to the first open book examination with assessments taken in 94 countries. Each learner is assigned to a ‘venue’ i.e. where they would have travelled to to take an in-person examination – our Learning Partners administered 911 venues in total.
Miles travelled are based as near as possible to the centre of each country and assumes all posted examination packs would have gone to the same airport.
Carbon footprint is based on a passenger travelling one way in economy class. As the footprint of freight is usually less than this we have based the footprint saving on the packs being sent out to venues by NEBOSH and being returned by the Learning Partner. The calculation does not take account of the footprint that would have been produced transporting examination packs to approximately 214 venues around the UK. Figures are based on this source https://bulb.co.uk/carbon-tracker/ .
One tree makes around 16 reams of paper.