Saving and receiving emails is never going to constitute the largest part of our carbon footprint. But it’s important to remember that sending an email requires energy: 0.3g of CO2 for a spam email, 4g for a proper email, and 50g for an email with attachments. Roughly speaking, a typical year of incoming/sent emails for a business user accounts for 135kg of CO2. According to a study by OVO Energy, over 64 million unnecessary emails are sent by British people every single day.
At the top of the list are emails sent to say “Thank you”, “Thanks”, or “Have a good weekend”. If each adult sent one less email “Thank you” email a day, the UK could reduce its carbon output by over 16,433 tonnes! So, why not take part in the effort and think twice before sending those emails? Of course, some emails are difficult to avoid as individuals. According to research by McAfee, 78% of all incoming emails are spam. The company stated that around 80% of the energy required to send spam emails is consumed by the reading and deleting of spam, as well as searching through spam folders to find genuine emails. So we can only hope that spam emails stop existing in the years to come!
further reading…
Saving and receiving emails is never going to constitute the largest part of our carbon footprint. But it’s important to remember that sending an email requires energy: 0.3g of CO2 for a spam email, 4g for a proper email, and 50g for an email with attachments. Roughly speaking, a typical year of incoming/sent emails for a business user accounts for 135kg of CO2. According to a study by OVO Energy, over 64 million unnecessary emails are sent by British people every single day.
At the top of the list are emails sent to say “Thank you”, “Thanks”, or “Have a good weekend”. If each adult sent one less email “Thank you” email a day, the UK could reduce its carbon output by over 16,433 tonnes! So, why not take part in the effort and think twice before sending those emails? Of course, some emails are difficult to avoid as individuals. According to research by McAfee, 78% of all incoming emails are spam. The company stated that around 80% of the energy required to send spam emails is consumed by the reading and deleting of spam, as well as searching through spam folders to find genuine emails. So we can only hope that spam emails stop existing in the years to come!