My Email Signature will be changing! By Melissa Rose
The internet, including email accounts for roughly 3.7% of global carbon emissions.
Sources include to power up the device, for infrastructure and data centres (energy for processing, storing, and cooling).
Emails may seem trivial individually, but globally they add up to a substantial carbon footprint.
But with over 300 billion emails sent daily worldwide, annual emissions from emails are estimated between 300 million to 410 million tonnes of CO₂
Look at these figures:
- A standard short email (laptop to laptop, no attachments) typically emits between 0.3 g to 4g CO₂e
- A spam email or automatic system message often emits as little as 0.03 g CO₂e
- A long email can produce around 17 g CO₂e
- An email with a large attachment or pictures (e.g. 1 MB+) can reach up to 50 g CO₂e
And don’t even mention “dark data!” A real can of worms …….
Notably, by adopting mindful email habits—like minimising use (unnecessary emails), reducing size, avoiding attachments (using links instead), simplifying email signatures, tidying mailbox and avoiding clutter we can meaningfully shrink our digital emissions footprint. Choosing to send an SMS text message is the perhaps the most environmentally friendly alternative as a way of staying in touch because each text generates just 0.014g of CO2e.
From today forward, my signature will include the words “ Thank you”. (If you do not receive a non-essential email reply this is because I am trying to reduce my Carbon Footprint. Therefore, I will do it in advance)
