The increasing traffic demand has reduced the efficiency of road networks and intensified the maintenance need for mobility and safety, increasing vehicle emissions, reducing air quality, and affecting climate change. To mitigate the negative impacts of work zone activities, a reliable method that can optimize spatio-temporal work zone activities is desirable. Previous studies have aimed to minimize the total cost, including maintenance, user delay, and accident costs, yet the associated environmental impact has been neglected. This study aims to optimize work zone activities using the artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm, considering the cost of vehicle emissions in addition to the aforementioned costs for an environmentally sustainable optimization. MOtor Vehicle Emission Simulator (MOVES) is applied to calculate emission rates. The results show that the ABC algorithm is very efficient to search for the optimal solution that yields the minimum cost taking into account the well-being of the environment.