Did you know that the efficient use of email helps combat climate change?
No, we have not gone crazy. Deleting old emails can help reduce your carbon footprint and is a tool to fight the climate crisis.
The simple fact of using the Internet consumes electricity; have a working router, have a charging computer, even have an operational mobile phone. It all runs on energy, but did you know that internet providers and email services consume a lot of electricity?
Most electrical power is generated through fossil fuels, with steam turbines that use hydrocarbons and coal. This fossil energy is highly polluting, and only in Spain does it represent the majority of primary energy consumption.
That's why sending, receiving, and saving old email leaves a carbon footprint. According to researchers, about 280 billion emails are sent every day around the world. Sending an email represents about 4 grams of carbon footprint, but eliminating 30 can save up to 200 watts.
Calculate the energy you use
Energy Use Calculator is a web page that provides a completely free calculator to calculate the electricity consumption of the different devices in our home, be it a light bulb, a television or a desktop computer. By being aware of the consumption that our devices represent, we can help reduce our carbon footprint.
How to reduce my carbon footprint?
The most important thing is to become aware of the energy consumption represented by the emails we keep and the consequences they can have for planet Earth and, therefore, those who live on it.
As EFE Verde reports, it is the large service providers or mailboxes that must start the change. However, we -as individuals- can also reduce the consumption of this energy by doing something as simple as turning off our devices when we are not using them, charging them at off-peak hours, or thinking about whether there are emails that are really worth sending.
We cannot stop large companies like Google, Amazon or Facebook, but we can reduce our environmental impact by cleaning up or unsubscribing from advertising that we never open.
As The Good Planet, about 107 billion spam emails were sent and received in a single day in 2019. This means that deleting 30 emails could potentially save 5,175,00 gigabytes of storage space and around 165.6 million kilowatts. .
You might also be interested in… Carbon footprint: learn how to calculate your environmental impact.