The true ecological cost of email
Email has become an indispensable means of communication, with a host of virtues: fast, practical, efficient... . But how much does it contribute to our greenhouse gas emissions?
Calculating the emissions it represents in CO2 equivalent (CO2e) is no easy task. You have to take into account the entire life cycle of this IT communication, because its environmental impact depends on the terminal on which it was created, the messaging system by which it is sent, the amount of information it contains (from the subject line to the signature, including attachments) and the time it takes the recipient to read it, via the infrastructures that circulate and store it. It's complex, but not impossible for specialists, and the latest estimates predict that the CO2e emissions of an e-mail vary globally between 0.03 and 26 grams (a wide range from a simple e-mail to a fairly heavy message that took 10 minutes to write and was sent to 100 recipients). Analyses show that the carbon footprint of the terminal - computer or smartphone - plays a predominant role in these emissions, as it is estimated that 69% of the CO2 is attributable to the manufacture of the computer used for writing, and 23% to the one used for reading.Energy consumption during writing (5%) and reading (2%), data transfers over the network (0.5%) and e-mail storage (0.5%) have a minimal impact. The main conclusion from this is that, as in most cases, true sobriety lies in reducing the manufacture of new goods and products, so to reduce the environmental impact of an e-mail, we need to extend the lifespan of computers and smartphones!
In this context, tackling e-mail to reduce our carbon footprint is not a top priority. However, if the statistics predict that 400 billion e-mails will be sent by 2025, some sober habits can be adopted to reduce the impact of these messages.
- An e-mail that is not sent cannot pollute. We can temper our systematic use of e-mail. Face-to-face communication with your office neighbor is often more efficient and so much more "human". Likewise, "replying to everyone" is often unhelpful and can be akin to spam.
- We can avoid "over-loading" e-mails (it's easy: compress attachments, signatures without embellishment - of course, don't attach signatures or logos - delete the history built into long e-mail exchanges, prefer text format to HTML formatting).
- Unsubscribe from all unnecessary mailing lists.
- Deleting old e-mails can't hurt - it frees up space, but it's more of a transmitter than forgetting about them. However, the more e-mail you have to store, the more data centers you need, and therefore the more energy you need to cool and power them!