What is the carbon footprint for my emails?

Long regarded as green compared to other industries, digital is also responsible for global warming.

Yes, this wonderful virtual world that we work in every day. This digital universe filled with cloud, Wi-Fi and thousands of internet searches that make us forget the environmental impact of our excessive consumption of new technologies. Behind each message, call, email or video downloaded, viewed or sent, hides real energy consumption.

What is the carbon footprint?

This is the amount of CO² emitted by an activity/person/group/organisation through its consumption of energy and raw materials. It contributes to global warming and translates into the amount of forest area needed to emit that much carbon dioxide.

The arrival of the Internet has had a significant impact on our daily life and our habits. Today, to transmit a message we use email, SMS, instant messaging and social networks and therefore less paper and transport. We thought we were polluting less because everything is paperless, but in reality each action requires data storage. And to store all this information you need data that have a huge environmental impact.

In short, clicking is polluting.

How does an email pollute?

Behind the sending and storing of an email hides an internet network and computer servers that work 24/7, 365 days a year. While these machines have greatly improved our exchanges and information sharing, they have had devastating effects on energy consumption and resource depletion.  Mostly because of the massive amount of emails sent around the world (3.8 billion in 2018).

1 with 1 attachment of 1 MB = 19g of CO²

The impact multiplies considerably if the email is sent to several recipients and depending on the size of the attachment.

What are the solutions?

In terms of the web:

• Use specific keywords to limit the number of web requests
• Enter the site’s address directly in the navigation bar
• Use an eco-friendly search engine, such as Ecosia, which plants a tree every 7 seconds

In terms of email:

• Keep only productive emails with our Mailinblack solution 
• Sort your emails and use Cleanfox to unsubscribe from newsletters that you don’t read
• Delete your old emails and empty your trash
• Don’t multiply the number of recipients
• Limit sending/compress your attachments

In terms of daily activity:

• Store data locally (hard disk)
• Put your computer to sleep or shut it down