It is a given that email is more environmentally friendly than snail-mail and old-fashioned paper memos. While it hasn’t led to a completely paperless office yet, the shift to digital communication has greatly helped U.S. offices cut down on paper usage within the last decade. Snail mail relies on equipment and fuel to deliver mail, whereas email can be delivered nearly instantaneously over great distances. Clearly email wins the environmental vote.
But by how much email wins is debatable. Electricity powers not only your personal and office computers, but also the email servers where your messages sit before you check them. Despite breakthroughs in alternative energy sources, most of that electricity still comes from polluting technologies like fossil fuels. Many people also print out important emails, effectively canceling out the advantage email has over snail-mail when it comes to paper usage.
As a society, we are becoming increasingly conscious of the environmental ramifications of our actions. Hybrid cars cruise our roadways, recycling has become second-nature for most of us, and lowering or offsetting one’s carbon footprint (a measure of the impact our activities have on the environment, particularly on climate change and pollution) is becoming more popular than ever. With all of the other ways we are trying to go green, let’s not forget the little things we can do to help save our planet. What follows are some ideas to consider when trying to make your email environmentally friendly.
Resist the Urge to Print
A significant part of how green you’re making your daily email routine relates to how often you print out emails. You might be thinking to yourself, as I did before asking around, who actually prints their email messages out? Well, quite a lot of people, in fact, including several of my colleagues and members of my own family. The reasons for printing out a tangible copy of an email ranged from sensible (needing a hard copy for legal records or printing a map embedded in a message) to frivolous (printing a humorous email out to share around the office or printing out the day’s missives for reading in a favorite easy-chair).
As I mentioned before, habitually printing out the contents of your inbox cancels out a large part of email’s benefit over snail-mail. For years there has been a push against this very issue that has spread via email signatures. Looking back through my archives, I found more than a few messages within the past few months urging me to “Please consider the environment before printing out this email.” I might have missed them the first time, but that doesn’t mean other people did. It’s a gentle reminder that just might work.
Additionally, if you must print an important email message, consider using Greenprint. Greenprint previews the document you’re about to print and highlights potentially unnecessary pages for removal. It also provides information on exactly how much ink and paper (and therefore, money) you’ve saved.
Spam Is Not Just Annoying
According to a study conducted by ICF International (commissioned by McAfee) the act of deleting spam or sifting through junk-mail folders trying to retrieve legitimate email messages, annually, in the U.S., is equal in energy consumption to the annual electrical usage of 2.4 million homes and the greenhouse gas emissions of 3.1 million passenger cars using two billion gallons of gas. This means that just one spam message is equal to 0.3 grams of CO2 or driving one car a distance of three feet.
Total Emission for Spam as showed in ICF International's study.
When you consider how many thousands of spam messages many of us receive in one year, some of us in just one month, the effect of junk email messages on the environment can be staggering. There are two effective solutions to this problem. The first is stopping spam at its source by shutting down spam servers. The second and much more feasible solution is to use a spam filter. If spam filters were used universally it would be the energy-saving equivalent of taking 2.3 million cars off the road.
You can help by utilizing an intelligent spam-filtering application such as Mailwasher or Spambully or by switching to a webmail service that includes a built-in spam-blocker, such as Gmail or Zenbe (which we reviewed here).
For additional tips on avoiding spam, try this article: What’s The Best Way To Deal With Spam?
Not All Email Service Providers Are Created Equal
In addition to storage space, cost, and support, something you might want to consider when choosing an email service provider is if they are environmentally conscious. Many people are under the false impression that the internet is inherently green. In fact, web and email servers need a lot of power both to run and keep cool. Research from earlier this year helps shed light on just how much power web and email servers actually use.
The most eco-friendly web and email hosting providers use super-efficient servers and/or purchase alternative energy credits to offset reliable electricity that is pulled of the grid. Among my top picks for ecologically-minded email service providers are GreenGeeks and SuperGreen.
Additionally, if you’re looking for more green email service providers, you can find an extensive listing here: ESG Green Email Plans.
The Cost of Doing Nothing
While there are many noble causes to be fought on the environmental front, making your email green is among the easiest to tackle. With just a few small changes in our daily routines, we can make a noticeable difference. It’s important to remember that it costs next to nothing to make your email more environmentally friendly, especially when you take into account the potential benefits to our planet. And while making your email green might not feel like saving the world, it certainly doesn’t hurt.
