How does email cause carbon footprint?

Below are the average carbon footprints of different emails: An average spam email: 0.3 g CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent) A standard email: 4 g CO2e . An email with “long and tiresome attachments”: 50 g CO2e .

Why are emails so bad for the environment? Every email processed uses electricity . This is used not only to run the computer, server and routers, but also to manufacture the equipment. To produce this electricity, fossil fuel power plants burn carbon fuels such as coal, oil or gas.

Add attachments For a typical email, this electricity is responsible for 4g of CO2 emissions. If it has a picture attachment, this needs extra storage and takes longer to transmit, so the carbon footprint rises to an average of 50g.

Deleting emails is the easiest way to reduce your carbon footprint on the computer , but that’s not all you can do. You could also unsubscribe from emails or newsletters you don’t actually intend to read, or delete those emails once you’ve read them.15 Mar 2021