Ever wondered what the carbon footprint of emails were? Truth is, our emails have an environmental impact we might not be aware of. Here’s what you need to know about the carbon footprint of emails and some solutions.
The carbon footprint of email vs letter is a bit varied. Sending an email uses less CO2 than sending a letter unless it has a large attachment. Sending a letter may use less CO2 if the email has a large attachment.
People are using bigger phones. Researchers found that smartphones with larger screens have a measurably worse carbon footprint than their smaller ancestors.
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.
Yes, deleting emails reduces their carbon footprint. According to The Good Planet, if everyone around the world deleted just 10 emails, that would save 1,725,000 GB of storage space, which is around 55.2 million KW of power.
When we leave our emails alone to amass, that data must be stored 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.