Last Updated on May 2, 2023

Ever wondered what the carbon footprint of emails were? Truth is, our emails have an environmental impact we might not be aware of. 

However, not all emails are created equal: The footprint of the email you receive varies based on how it was sent. For example, a spam email will have a lower carbon footprint than one with a picture attached to it.  

Even what device you send an email on may effect its carbon footprint.  

This isn’t to say we shouldn’t send emails anymore. In fact, they’re still better for the environment than mailing a letter in most instances (more on that later). But I hope this opens a dialogue and gets us thinking about our digital impact. 

Here’s what you need to know about the carbon footprint of emails and some solutions.   

what is the carbon footprint of email vs letter? 

The carbon footprint of email vs letter is a bit varied. Comparing the two depends on what type of email you’ll be sending out. 

According to The Carbon Footprint of Everything, the footprint of an email varies dramatically: 

• Spam email: 0.3g CO2
• Regular email: 4g CO2 
• Photo or hefty attachment: 50g CO2 

Mike Berners-Lee, a fellow at Lancaster University, researchers carbon footprints. However, it is important to note these figures were created ~13 years ago.  

Since then, Charlotte Freitag, a carbon footprint expert at Small World Consulting founded by Berners-Lee, says the impact of emails may have gone up.  

The reason? People are using bigger phones. 

Researchers found that smartphones with larger screens have a measurably worse carbon footprint than their smaller ancestors. Even Apple has admitted building an iPhone 7 Plus creates roughly 10% more CO2 than the iPhone 6s. 

With this in mind, based off the old figures, we can now compare this to a physical letter. 

A letter can produce up to 29 grams of CO2 from the process of standard shipping.  

So, if you must send a photo, important document, or an invite, it may be more eco-friendly to send it the old-fashioned way. Not to mention the USPS intends to deploy over 66,000 electric vehicles by 2028, which will only reduce the emissions of transporting those letters. 

However, another option is to try and shrink the size of your attachment. If you compress email attachments, adopt lighter file formats or replace the attachments with a hyperlink it uses less energy. 

does deleting emails reduce carbon footprint? 

Yes, deleting emails reduces their carbon footprint. In fact, according to The Good Planet, if everyone around the world deleted just 10 emails (spam or not spam), that would save 1,725,000 gigabytes of storage space, which is around 55.2 million kilowatts of power. 

To put this into perspective, just 33 billion kilowatt-hours is the equivalent of: 

• Electricity in 2.4 million homes 
• Greenhouse gas emissions of 3.1 million passenger cars 
• 2 billion U.S. gallons of gasoline 

So, you can imagine the good saving 55.2 million kilowatts of power would do.  

While deleting emails is one solution, another is simply unsubscribing from newsletters in the first place. This way, you’ll receive less emails overall. 

Be sure to take a look at your inbox and decide which newsletters are no longer serving you (this will not only reduce your carbon footprint, but also clean the noise in your inbox! Win-win).  

is keeping emails bad for environment? 

Keeping emails can harm the environment, simply because it’s a matter of stored (and wasted) energy.  

It takes energy to power your computer, phone, and internet. And it takes even more energy for internet providers and email services to continually store all the data.

And where is that energy coming from? Fossil fuels. Let me elaborate.

It all boils down to data centres, aka a large group of networked computer servers typically used by organizations for the remote storage, processing, or distribution of large amounts of data. 

These data centers are storing all our inboxed emails. They’re also powered on mostly fossil fuels, which are carbon intensive and contribute to climate change.

Data centers also need 24/7 air conditioning to keep the computers cool, creating even more emissions and consuming more energy. A 2015 study found internet use results in as much CO2 emissions as the aviation industry. 

When we leave our emails alone to amass, that data must be stored somewhere, aka in a data center. But when we choose to delete that email, we’re freeing up space in data centers, making them work more efficiently without over-consuming power. 

Ultimately, data centers must shift towards being powered by renewable energy. Blame cannot be put solely on individuals: the system must change. That is the ultimate solution to an email’s carbon footprint, after all.   

RELATED: Is An Internet Search Bad For The Environment? 

So, what are your thoughts on the carbon footprint of emails? Let me know in the comments below!