According to the results of a study, sending an email produces just 0.3 grams of carbon dioxide. This means it is a far more eco-friendly way of communicating content than sending a traditional postcard. If we look at the issue globally, however, the figures are not as encouraging.
The heavier an email, the more it pollutes
However, because most of the emails sent every day are handled by huge servers powered by polluting energy sources such as coal and other fossil fuels, the overall carbon footprint of email exchange is extremely negative. So, while individual emails have a limited impact on the environment, the massive use of email contributes significantly to pollution. Think, for example, of an exchange of 7–8 emails between two or more people on a specific topic.
And that is not all. There are some critical aspects of email:
- Attachments (PDF files, images, videos, etc.), which require even more energy to upload and download.
- The ease with which emails can be forwarded, which leads to the sending of numerous unnecessary messages that probably would never have been sent by traditional post.
- The use of the send-and-receive mode.
- Printing emails, especially in the workplace. The habit of printing an email as soon as it is received, multiplied across a company of, say, 100 employees, leads to considerable consumption.
A 2010 study entitled How bad are bananas: the carbon footprint of everything, by Mike Berners-Lee, a researcher and writer on carbon footprints, found that a single text-only email produced 4 grams of CO2, while an email with attachments can produce as much as 50 grams of CO2.
Ademe, a French agency for the environment, ecological transition and energy management, produced a study finding that 8 emails pollute as much as a car travelling 1 km, and that a 1-megabyte email emits around 19 grams of CO2.
What can we do to reduce the impact?
As we said, the carbon footprint of an email depends on its ‘weight’ in bytes. The larger the email file, the more energy is needed to send and receive it. So, to reduce its environmental impact, it is important to try to keep the size of your emails, or of all your emails taken together, as small as possible. This can be done in several ways:
- avoiding attaching unnecessary files to the email,
- compressing the files you intend to attach
- choosing an email provider that uses green servers.
- avoiding the send-and-receive mode where possible.
- using email only when necessary, preferably for short, concise messages;
- sending emails in plain text rather than HTML;
- avoiding attaching large files to our emails;
- turning off the ‘Read receipt’ function when it is not strictly necessary.
- avoiding printing emails when it is not strictly necessary
The main piece of advice, however, is to ‘reflect’ before sending an email. Let us ask ourselves whether it is really useful to do so, and in the case of long exchanges with our contacts, let us prefer other tools such as calls or chat programs to email. This will have a twofold benefit: for communication and for the environment. Less is more, in short, once again.
