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Siel Ju

The carbon footprint of your e-mail

MNN's lifestyle blogger calculates out the daily carbon footprint of her email inbox.

Thu, Oct 21 2010 at 5:08 PM EST
 4

gmail Photo: notoriousxl/Flickr
One hazard of being an eco-blogger: You get a lot of e-mails every day. The time my inbox eats up is an obvious problem — but the constant flow of e-mail also creates a green issue, since each e-mail does have a carbon footprint.
 
The Guardian’s Green Living Blog did the math — and now I’m imagining my Gmail account with a tailpipe spewing greenhouse gases. Did you just spam me? Well then you created 0.3 grams worth of CO2-equivalent emissions — about the same amount as driving three feet in a car.
 
Luckily, though I get hundreds of spam e-mails a day, I don't spend much time on them before deleting them, thanks to Gmail’s spam filter. My quick, automated reactions to exterminate spam means that only about 22 percent of my e-mail inbox’s carbon footprint is created by spam. While I’d like to nix that completely unnecessary waste, there’s obviously little I can do about spam — besides report it and delete it — so I’m going to accept the spam as something I can’t change.
 
Which brings me to the rest of my inbox — that honestly, often includes a lot of spam-esque e-mails thanks to misguided PR people who include me on badly targeted mass e-mails. According to the Guardian, each “proper e-mail” creates 4 grams of CO2-equivalent emissions — equivalent to driving 40 feet.
 
So I thought I’d figure out the daily carbon footprint of my Gmail inbox. Now I did not major in math, so if you see a miscalculation, please let me know. Here goes: I got 131 “proper e-mails” yesterday — with the CO2-equivalent emissions of driving 5,240 feet — almost a mile! That plus the spam — roughly equivalent to driving 1,480 feet, assuming Guardian’s 22 percent figure) — means I emitted the CO2 equivalent emissions of driving 6,720 feet!
 
Except it doesn’t end there. Send me an e-mail with a long and tiresome attachment, and you’ve burned through a whopping 50 grams of CO2-equivalent emissions. Of the 131 “proper e-mails” I got yesterday, 13 had onerous attachments. Which brought my e-mail calculations to this:
118 “proper e-mails” sans attachments X 4g CO2e = 472 g CO2e
13 e-mails with attachments X 50g CO2 = 650 g CO2e
So from “proper e-mails” both with and without attachments, I get 1122 g CO2e — which with spam swells up to 1438g CO2e — or the equivalent to driving 14,380 feet, or 2.72 miles!
 
I was gnashing my teeth over this when I remembered that I had forgotten to include the e-mails I sent. I sent 14 — one with an attachment — which brings the total to 1569g CO2e — or the equivalent to driving 15,690 feet, or 2.97 miles!
 
Good thing I took the bus when I went out to dinner last night! The Guardian flirts with the idea of charging a cent per e-mail — which seems rather drastic to me. On the other hand, I’d get a lot less spam and spam-esque e-mails — neither of which I feel I have much control over at the moment.
 
Got any brilliant ideas for reducing e-mail? Share them in the comments.
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anonymous
Kay 03/19/2012 11:08 AM

It is true that the internet itself is wireless, however, in order to access this wireless network we are tuned into an electronic device. Computers, iPads, smartphones, the power drainage is increased with extensive use. This is where the energy usage that is discussed above is coming from. Anytime energy is used, there are CO2 emissions created.

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anonymous
Pickle 12/17/2010 17:12 PM

You're right that the 'net does have something of a carbon footprint, but according to The Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/aug/12/carbon-footprint-internet), ALL information related use accounts for only about 1% of fossil fuel consumption. Granted, that 1% should be cut back, but at the same time, how about we focus our energy on the things that are REALLY killing the.... More

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anonymous
Edwin Cholly 10/23/2010 23:37 PM

You do know what the internet is a wireless world in which no C02 is diffusing gas, right?
I want to see references on who determined this rubbish.

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anonymous
Bob 12/14/2010 14:16 PM

You DO know that your computer and the internet use something called ELECTRICITY, right? And the production of said electricity requires energy from another source, often a source which creates pollution. Still with me or do I need to explain with smaller words?

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