What is Email Carbon Footprint & How to Minimize?

A lot of us must be receiving email notifications saying that our Google (or whatever cloud system you use) storage is full. Then you might notice that you have a pile of unread and spam emails from newsletters you might not even remember signing up for.

Did you know that this contributes to your digital carbon footprint?

In this article, we will learn how emails leave a carbon footprint online and the extent of carbon emissions they release. We will also give some tips on reducing your email carbon footprint.

The amount of greenhouse gases emitted into the environment during the creation, transmission, storage and reading of emails by an individual or group is known as their ‘email carbon footprint.’  

The energy used for all these activities comes from burning fossil fuels, which release greenhouse gasses and increase carbon emissions. 

Several factors determine how much emissions an email generates, such as: 

• The device that generated the email
• How long it took to write and read
• Attachments, if any, and their size
• The energy used in sending it
• The efficiency of the different data centres it passes through 

Emails create a carbon footprint when they are created, delivered read and stored. Let's take a closer look at how this works.

To compose an email, you use an electronic device that is powered by energy, usually generated from burning fossil fuels. So, when composing and sending an email, you release a certain amount of CO2, thus creating a carbon footprint from the device and duration of usage.

In this sense, anything that you do online creates a carbon footprint trail. You can read more about how this works in our article about Digital Carbon Footprint.

After you've sent the email, carbon emissions are generated from the receiver's end. If the receiver doesn't delete the email, it gets stored on data servers, which takes a lot of energy to run. The longer someone stores an email, the more carbon footprint gets created. So, the quicker the email is cleared out, the less energy is utilized in storage. 

Apart from this, there are also factors such as file sizes, attachments, the devices that the email is sent to, how many receivers are included in the email, etc.

The carbon footprint of emails comes from the fuelling of the energy that is required to draft an email in the first place. Fossil fuels are the biggest contributors of greenhouse gases and emails are just another element that uses this source of energy for its functioning.

As per recent data, 347.3 billion emails are sent per day. That means more than 4 million emails are sent per second. Nearly 85% of them are spam emails.

The carbon footprint of an email varies basis different factors, however, standard numerical measurements developed by Basile Fighiera - an expert in measuring the carbon footprint of digital technology, from Life Cycle Analyzes - can be considered as follows: 

• A short email without attachment (10 KB) written and read on a smartphone with a 4G connection to 1 recipient emits 0.4 gCO₂e
• A short email with a large attachment (10 MB) written and read on a smartphone with a 4G connection to 1 recipient emits 1.8 gCO₂e
• An email with an attachment (1 MB) written on a computer with a Wi-Fi connection to 1 recipient emits 3.3 gCO₂e, and
• A short email without attachment (10 KB) written on a computer with a Wi-Fi connection to 10 recipients emits 4.9 gCO₂e. 

These figures for a single email might seem small and insignificant, but if you consider the thousands of emails sent globally every day, they multiply to a great amount of carbon footprint emissions just from emails.

Completely replacing emails with other forms of digital communication is not possible, but individuals and companies can take conscious steps towards reducing the carbon footprint of emails.

We've mentioned some points below that can reduce the carbon footprint of emails: 

• Delete useless emails, especially promotional, spam and unnecessary emails. Often, they are overlooked and get stored in server that emits CO₂.
• Don't forget to empty your email trash folder after you have deleted your junk email to permanently remove them.
• Unsubscribe from unwanted emails, newsletters, promotional emails, etc. The option will usually be there at the end of the email.
• Turn off social media email notifications from platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, etc., unless entirely necessary.
• Avoid sending one-word or single line emails. Instead, you can ensure that your emails contain all the essential information to prevent the need for a follow-up email.
• Implement an email management system where you delete, delegate, archive, or respond to the emails you get every day, to have a zero inbox.
• If you are part of a corporation, you might be required to send promotional emails. But, if the email doesn't provide value to the person receiving it, or you send too many emails, or to a wide demographic that isn't part of your target audience, then it simply classifies under spam emails which adds to carbon emissions.
• Corporate emailers can also clean up email lists and remove any inactive subscribers who don't engage.
• Don’t send heavy emails with many images/GIFs, which requires more storage and thus more energy. You can hyperlink files rather than adding attachments.
• Automatically delete emails that have become irrelevant after a period. For e.g., if you are sending an email about an offer, discount, event, etc., you can set an expiration date on the email once the sale/offer is over as the email is no longer valuable. 

There are various tools available online where you can check the carbon footprint of your email and emails campaigns. To calculate the carbon footprint of your email campaign:

• Enter the number of emails sent
• The frequency of your campaign, and
• Your country of residence.

You will then get an estimate of your annual email campaign carbon footprint and what it is equivalent to.

For e.g., if you've sent 5000 emails on a weekly basis from India, the annual carbon footprint of your email campaign will be 30,999g CO2eq.

This is similar to charging your phone more than 3,700 times or burning around 15kg of coal.

*Calculator Source

 If you want to measure your overall carbon footprint, you can do so easily through Digit’s Carbon Footprint Calculator.

Simply download the Digit App and navigate to our Carbon Footprint Calculator.

Digit's Carbon Footprint Calculator considers three parameters:

• What type of house do you live in?
• What is the annual distance you travel?
• What type of diet do you follow?

After you've entered all your information, you can view your carbon footprint.

The problem is not so much the carbon footprint of an email but rather how our electronic is used. Every technology use has an impact on the planet. On the scale of a company or country, the accumulation of this pollution caused through emails can take its toll.

That's why, by starting out with reducing our email carbon footprint, we can contribute to reducing the global digital carbon footprint.