The digital era has paved the way for various technological innovations. Among these ever-changing digital innovations are tools that make communication easier, faster, and more accessible—electronic mail or email—but did you know that this can also harm the environment?
An email is a type of digital communication tool for exchanging messages, documents, and files via electronic devices, utilizing the internet as its medium.
At first glance, it may seem that the mere existence of this tool is harmless. In fact, emails contributed greatly to the evolution of communication in various industries, but there’s more than meets the eye.
Sent Email Means Emission Of Co2
Did you know that the spam emails in your inbox contribute to the emission of CO2, or carbon dioxide?
The act of sending an email causes an emission of carbon dioxide, which means a carbon footprint is being left every time you receive an email from someone.
The amount of carbon footprint an email can have also varies, and it can depend on different factors like email length, the device used to send emails, and if emails have file attachments to them.
According to a study, the average carbon footprint of a spam email is 0.3 grams. Meanwhile, a regular email’s carbon footprint is 4 grams, and an email with an attachment is 50 grams of carbon footprint, or carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e).
In short, an email impacts the environment due to the infrastructure behind every message that is composed through an email. When you compose an email and send it to someone, electricity, and energy are being used.
Tips To Reduce Carbon Emissions As Digital Natives
Now that we generally have an idea about the seemingly invisible environmental impact of emails, it is time for us to do our part as people living in the digital era.
Of course, we cannot just avoid using emails, as email is simply the cornerstone of our advancing world. However, we can do little things to prevent the further emission of carbon footprints through our sent and received emails, considering most of us own more than one email account.
First and foremost, deleting emails from your inbox is the easiest thing we can do. Reducing the amount of email stored in data centers will also reduce the emissions of carbon dioxide from them. To add to that, who does not want their inbox to be clean and free from spam messages and emails?
When composing an email, consider writing your message as short as possible. The longer the text, the larger the file type the email will have, and more energy will be needed to transmit and store those emails.
During your free time, consider organizing your email inbox by unsubscribing from newsletters that no longer interest you. There’s no use in receiving newsletters on a platform you’ve outgrown supporting.
As we continue to live in today’s digital landscape, it is important that we recognize that even our online habits can have an impact on our environment. Communicating digitally using emails is only one online habit that we need to constantly look out for.
Even though technological and digital advancements may soon clear the path to more eco-friendly innovations, it is important to still be vigilant of other potential negative environmental impacts from these advancements.
