My mind was blown this week on the unintended environmental impact of one of the most innocuous activities - sending email (I know!).
📨 It’s estimated 4 million emails are sent every second (thats 347 billion a day). And each one of these not only needs processing power and storage to send, but also to retain. Remember the Cloud is someone else’s computer!
According to Mailjet a spam email generates approximately 0.3g of CO2, while a typical personal email produces 4g of CO2 - more than ten times the impact. Even more striking is the carbon footprint of emails with photo attachments, which can generate up to 50g of CO2 per message.
Obviously, these numbers fall short of power-hungry AI queries* (up to 150-200g of CO2) but highlight how both traditional and emerging digital technologies contribute to our carbon footprint in ways that might not be immediately obvious. 🤯
What can we do about it?
🌳 As an industry: Support initiatives such as "smart expiration" protocols. Under this system, emails would be automatically categorised based on their content and assigned appropriate retention periods. For instance, meeting invitations could expire shortly after the event date, promotional emails could be automatically deleted after 30 days, and important documents could be flagged for longer retention.
🌳🌳 As marketers: Do a better job of thinking hard about sending that next “mass” email, not only from good marketing practice but also from a sustainability perspective. Good targeting and consideration of the ICP will reduce the volume. Don’t spam the base!
🌳🌳🌳 As individuals: Take practical steps to reduce our email-related carbon emissions: limiting unnecessary emails, being mindful of large attachments, regularly clearing out old messages, and unsubscribing from unwanted mailing lists.
*🌳🌳🌳🌳 Bonus Tip! Stop using GenAI to ask what time is it, the capital of France or what's 37*5. It's all relative I know, but using good old Google is much better for the planet!
While each email's impact may seem small, the cumulative effect of billions of emails sent daily makes this something at least thinking about. And how small, collective changes can make big impacts.
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