Tips about saving the Earth have been quickly spread around the world. These include saving gas, reducing paper consumption, saving water and electricity, and deleting emails.

Yes, you read it right. Simply deleting emails can actually save our planet Earth.

Ask yourself.

How many read and unread emails do I have on my device?

When was the last time I took time to manage and delete emails?

Let’s be real. We are email hoarders as no one has time to review and delete them. 

If you want to save the Earth, start by simply deleting emails. 

The majority of us got intrigued about how deleting emails can save the Earth. Here’s the explanation.

How Deleting Emails Can Save The Earth?

Every email contains electrical energy which enables us to run a computer, connect to the internet, and store data from email services on multiple servers. These multiple servers are stored in large data centers, which use a lot of electricity on a daily basis. 

From your device to your router, to the electricity wires outside your house that connect to the internet company, and then to the receiver of your email. All the emails will be stored on a server until it’s deleted.

All the energy used in the process comes from fossil fuels, which are one the largest sources of carbon emissions (CO2e) around the world.

Carbon emissions are greenhouse gas emissions caused by human activity that have the potential to harm the environment. This can be vehicles, factories, etc., including emails. In short, all of your emails whether it is spam, unread, or unwanted emails contribute to carbon emissions.

According to The Carbon Literacy Trust, each carbon emission has its equivalent grams of carbon dioxide per email.

• Average spam email = 0.3g CO2e
• Standard email = 4 g CO2e
• Email with attachments such as pdf, links = 50g CO2e

A study done by McAfee estimated that there were a total of 62 trillion spam emails sent in 2008 worldwide. Just imagine the numbers in 2021 and by the end of 2022!

Things You Can Do:

• Delete spam emails.
• Delete unwanted and unimportant emails.
• Cut out emails after reading them (if possible).
• Unsubscribe from emails you don’t need.
• Do not sign up or subscribe to newsletters that you aren’t going to read.

The problem isn’t the emails, it is the energy source. Deleting emails as much as possible cuts carbon emissions and reduces electric energy consumption.

For companies, it is important to go carbon neutral. For all of us, we should invest in more efficient computer chips and storage.

Share this with your friends and family.

Let’s make a change.

For more tech tips, feel free to contact us.