Digital pollution (or computer pollution) caused by emails refers to the environmental impact produced by the excessive energy used to generate, manage, transmit, and store email messages.
In recent decades, sending emails has been considered one of the least polluting free communication methods (and certainly it is when compared to sending paper letters), but the number of emails sent worldwide every day has become such that it creates some concern in terms of environmental sustainability.
According to estimates from Internet Live Stat, which monitors web statistical data in real-time, there are about 230 billion emails sent daily worldwide, most of which are spam (unwanted mail).
How much does sending an email pollute?
According to a study conducted by the French Agency for Environment and Energy Management (Ademe), every 1-megabyte email sent is equivalent to an emission of 19 grams of CO2.
The digital carbon footprint depends, however, not only on the number of emails sent and received but also on the nature of each individual email.
The carbon footprint of an email composed of only text is definitely less than that of an email that includes attachments such as documents, images, or other types of files, especially if they are large.
How do emails pollute?
The pollution produced by an email is the sum of the carbon footprints left in the different stages that the email goes through: from its sending to its reception by the recipient.
In this process, not only is the electrical energy used by the computers of the sender and recipient involved, but every time an email is sent, it is copied at least a dozen times on other servers to allow the message to reach its destination.
Energy is consumed at every step for the transmission from one server to another, for the cooling system of each server, and for storing a copy of the message on all servers.
The consequence is a series of CO2 emissions that are all the greater the more energy is used, and such amount of energy is greater the "heavier" the email to be delivered.
How to send a sustainable email
We can observe some precautions to send an email in the most sustainable way possible:
- Assess whether there is really a need to send that specific email
Often we can communicate a message using other slightly less polluting channels like instant messaging apps (WhatsApp, Telegram, Facebook Messenger) or SMS;
- Write the email text succinctly and comprehensively
Use our ability to summarize to develop a brief text in which we fully develop the topic at hand so as to avoid sending subsequent emails to integrate further information;
- Avoid unnecessary response emails like "ok", "fine", "see you later", "thanks"
- Compress attachments
Compressing large files reduces their "weight" as it decreases the number of megabytes to be sent;
- If possible, use the Cloud for file sharing
Instead of sending files as attachments in an email, we can opt for a file-sharing solution from the cloud, indicating the sharing link in the body of the email to the recipient.
This way, the recipient who clicks the link can easily access the files and download them onto their computer directly from the cloud.
This method involves less data consumption compared to sending attachments, significantly reducing its environmental impact;
- Limit the number of CC (main recipients) and Bcc (blind carbon copy recipients).
Remember that the more recipients there are, the more steps our email will have to take on various servers to reach everyone.
For this reason, it is better to avoid the "reply to all" if it is not strictly necessary.
How to manage our email inbox sustainably
Our contribution to environmental sustainability regarding emails is not limited to merely sending them, but also involves managing our inbox.
Think about how many useless spam or web marketing emails we receive each day that remain stored in our email account, significantly contributing to digital pollution.
To manage our email inbox in terms of environmental sustainability, we can perform simple cleaning actions that free up space and keep it tidy:
- Unsubscribe from all newsletters that do not interest us by clicking on the "Unsubscribe" link at the bottom
This will eliminate the source of superfluous emails. Remove, moreover, other useless web marketing emails;
- Delete old emails that we no longer need (both sent and received), especially if they contain large attachments;
- Permanently delete spam emails, block the sender and, if possible, report them to our email provider (Gmail, Outlook, Hotmail, Yahoo, etc...) especially if they are phishing (fraudulent emails that through a link inside extort users' personal and banking data). Also, set up a spam filter to limit their reception;
- Empty the trash in our email inbox periodically.