Fiber-optics makes environmental sense.  Fiber users report doing significantly more work from home. Approximately 13.4% of fiber users say they work 7.3 more days per month from home. Thus, on average, fiber customers work around one more day a month from home because of their connectivity. How this translates to potential savings and reductions in other arenas is eye opening. If everyone worked at home just one day a month we would see annually:

• 5% reduction in gasoline use
• 4% reduction in C02 emissions
• $5 billion in lower road expenditures
• $1.5 billion commute hours recaptured
• Direct savings to business
  

Reduced carbon emissions observed in installing and maintaining a fiber-optic networks results in an annual savings of about 700 pounds of greenhouse gases for the first 15 years of a given network implementation, or the equivalent of a European car travelling 1200 miles. After that, the annual savings more than double because the network is depreciated and only a small part of the infrastructure needs to be renewed each year.

Additionally, the fiber in a typical strand of fiber is made from silicon, essentially the same thing as beach sand. Silicon is abundantly available as opposed to copper which is a non-renewable resourceand has negative environmental impact when mines are abandoned and leave scars on the land and uncleaned waste products.