The carbon impact of an email.

Ever thought about it? Well, maybe you should.

It may only be one press of a button to send an email, but did you know the estimated standard email has a footprint of 4g of CO2e (this accounts for the power data centres and computers spent sending, filtering and reading messages).

An email with a “long attachment” can have a carbon footprint of up to 50g CO2e.

In addition, the average spam email has a footprint equivalent to 0.3g of carbon dioxide emissions (CO2e).

One stored email is equivalent to 10g CO2e per year.

Source: Mike Berners-Lee's (2012) ‘How Bad are Bananas: The Carbon Footprint of Everything’.

The most recent research suggests that 64 million unnecessary emails are sent every day in the UK!

How can you help…

• Don’t send unnecessary emails, this includes those two-word emails saying thank you!

• Unsubscribe from newsletters that you don’t want.

• Reduce the number of email addresses you use.

• Streamline the number of people you cc into your emails.

• Compress email attachments.

• Only back up what’s essential.