Want to save the planet – delete your emails…

Sustainability narratives are all around us.??The focus on carbon emissions curtailment is real, and fortuitously, has taken prominence with the current administration joining other governments in our global quest to reduce the detritus effects of free carbon based molecules in our fragile atmosphere.

So - What to do???While the focus on these?actions has centered on some of the largest contributors – power production, heavy industrials, transportation, and petrochemical conglomerates; ?a more nuanced approached has emerged around the (totally unexpected) contribution that email exerts on our precious planet.?Yes…your heard that right – email.

According to Data Center Knowledge ?- it is?estimated that over 1% of all energy currently used worldwide is used to power data centers.?Now, in a cloud based data storage ecosystem, much of the digital content sequestered in data centers is (you guessed it) email based.??Consider the daily flow of email traffic in today’s connected world.??All of these emails are developed, processed and stored in the thousands of data centers worldwide that encompass our collective data management and storage?infrastructure.?As you might expect – concerned organizations have recently calculated the energy cost (and thereby the related carbon footprint) of processing and storing all these emails.?The numbers will surprise you.?

It is estimated by Statista that over 300 Billion emails are processed and stored each day (2020 Data).?The carbon cost of sending , filtering, and reading each email is ~4 grams of C02 equivalent.?And that’s just the cost of creating and sending the email.????Add to that the yearly costs of storing that same email, and we need to tag on an additional ?0.3 Grams of CO2 per email, per year.????

If the average email user stores and average of 500 unneeded emails, and there are about 4 Billion email accounts worldwide, that totals a whopping 600,000,000 kilograms C02 equivalent per year. And that is just to store the email.??Taken as a whole, The carbon equivalent to process & store our global email would be in excess of 430 Billion kilograms C02 per year.

I can’t easily visualize what 430 Billion kilograms is.??So I’ve take the liberty to put that in perspective.?The heaviest object ever built by man is The Great Wall of China.?It is estimated to weigh in at 52.6 billion kilos – (not sure just how they calculated that, but let’s assume the math is right).???So a years’ worth of email results in over 8 fold the weight in C02 equivalent for this stone-and-earth edifice – and that is each year.

Many emails are now sent with presentations, attached documents and, occasionally, videos – collectively adding to many terabits of?processed and stored information.?Data centers don’t run on hope and aspirations, so the resultant energy consumption digested thru this massive thru put is,?well, massive, and estimated to increase at least 23% over the next 5 years.?Quick math puts that in equivalent C02 weight to 10 Great Walls by 2025.

While many of us don’t consider ourselves associated with a hording type mindset,?we do tend to hold on to emails rather dearly – likely more than we should, but sometimes with good reason.?Corporate based correspondence carry a specific significance as “discovery type“?documents we might need to retain.?Others on the personal side have sentimental value carrying information or pictures we want to cherish.?However, all this action likely developed under the premise that email storage was benign, and existed in the ethereal vapor of the ubiquitous “Worldwide Web-o-Sphere” that holds our cherished communique’.

We can help remedy this paradigm.?Deleting unwanted emails can serve two important purposes.?This carbon impact conundrum , and that of an overly congested digital quarry in our data centers.?If you need to save emails, consider dropping the files into a personal hard drive.?Once stored, they don’t?consume power resources and sit happily (and safely) on the cheap terabit drives we likely received as Secret Santa gifts during Christmas 2019.?

In?the early 1970’s those of you old enough to remember will recall the “Keep America Beautiful” campaigns. The stoic American Indian focused advertisement that stated?“People start pollution. People can stop it”.??Well before the advent of the personal computer,?internet, or the cell phone we were all collectively challenged with limiting physical trash across our great land.?That narrative has now shifted to the carbon front – reducing our personal collective carbon footprint is the modern call-to-arms for sustainability.?If your compelled to join the cause, consider your email situation.?Amazingly, It can make a difference, and you barely have to lift a finger to do your part….