Every employee who chooses to share a car to reach the office or workplace, over an average distance of around 30 kilometres, saves an average of 1,300 euros a year on fuel. And this is just one of the positive aspects of corporate carpooling. It is a service that is proving popular and continues to grow: to date, 57,000 employees from 73 companies prefer carpooling.

These are the figures released by Jojob, Italy's first corporate carpooling service, which allows employees to share a car on their commute between home and work with colleagues or workers from neighbouring companies. Thanks to an app — recently made available for Windows Phone as well — and a web platform, the service is able to quantify the actual CO2 saved after every carpooling journey.

It is an opportunity for businesses to reduce their carbon footprint and for employees to leave the car in the garage. According to the latest data, throughout 2015 the service made it possible to reduce CO2 emissions by 87 tonnes. In the first quarter alone, 43 tonnes had already been reached — an 18.9 per cent increase on the fourth quarter of the previous year.

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Corporate carpooling saves on fuel and emissions

"The attention Italian companies are paying to sustainable mobility and the results generated by Jojob are positioning Italy as the leading country in Europe for corporate carpooling," says Gerard Albertengo, chief executive of Bringme, the company behind Jojob. "For the first time, Italy is not the one playing catch-up — it is the example to follow. This year our goal will be to bring home-to-work carpooling to SMEs, and we will soon be seeing a first international version of Jojob."

The service is clearly expanding, as demonstrated by the increase in kilometres saved in 2016 (exactly 328,590 km, a fifth more than the previous year) and by the growing number of companies choosing the service: the most recent to sign up, in chronological order, are Ovs, Bioindustry Park Silvano Fumero, Fondazione Sacra Famiglia and Salvatore Ferragamo.

Another factor driving the uptake of the service is the opportunity to receive bonuses and discounts based on one's region or category: by accumulating "green leaves" through shared journeys, users can take advantage of a wide range of discounts and promotions, from a restaurant dinner to a sailing trip. It works somewhat like a certain type of recycling scheme, described as incentive-based. In the age of the sharing economy, it seems that sharing the commute is becoming ever more popular. Because it cuts costs and smog.