That quick “thank you” email might seem polite, but it is quietly cooking the planet.
The idea that curbing our digital chatter could help save the environment was popularised by Professor Mike Berners-Lee in his 2020 book How Bad Are Bananas? The Carbon Footprint of Everything. The respected authority on carbon foot-printing dropped a bombshell: every single email sends a puff of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
According to Berners-Lee, a single electronic missive creates anywhere from 0.3 to 50 g of carbon dioxide. This covers the spectrum from a quick text-only note to a message burdened with heavy attachments.
When you do the maths, the average person generates between 3 and 40 kg of carbon dioxide every year just by hitting “send”. To put that into perspective, your email habit is the environmental equivalent of driving a small petrol car for 127 miles.
The high cost of being polite
The sheer volume of unnecessary digital traffic is staggering. Renewable electricity company Ovo Energy estimated that 64 million emails are fired off within the UK every single day.
If every British citizen sent just one fewer email a day, it would save 16,433 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year. That is the same amount of carbon generated by over 81,000 flights from London to Madrid.
The worst offenders are the emails that say nothing at all. The 10 most unnecessary messages include single-word replies like “Appreciated”, “Cheers”, “LOL” and the ubiquitous “Thank you”.
Interestingly, we do not even want them. In a survey, 71% of Britons accepted that they would have no problem never receiving a “Thank you” email again if it helped the environment.
The cloud is not white and fluffy
The problem is that we view the internet as invisible. However, every time you send a message, it triggers a chain of heavy electronics that devours electricity.
The data travels from your laptop to a telecoms company and finally to a massive data centre run by a tech giant. These centres are not the ethereal “clouds” we imagine; they are vast, hot warehouses packed with servers that require immense amounts of energy to keep cool.
Susanne Baker, associate director for climate, environment and sustainability at the non-profit body TechUK, remarked that this traffic “does have an energy and carbon penalty”.
While big tech firms like Google are paying for environmental projects to polish their green credentials, the reality is stark. The carbon footprint of our gadgets and the internet accounts for an estimated 3.7% of greenhouse gas emissions — a figure that rivals the entire airline industry.
The rise of “dark data”
The National Grid foretells that by 2030, data centres will consume just under 6% of the UK’s total electricity. This surge is being driven by our addiction to high-bandwidth media like video calls, gaming and streaming.
But a silent killer is “dark data” — information we store but never look at again. Ian Hodgkinson, a professor of strategy at Loughborough University, told the Guardian that 68% of data used by companies is viewed only once. He believes the same is true for our personal lives.
We are digital hoarders. We store thousands of photos in the cloud, believing them to be safe and carbon neutral. Professor Hodgkinson points out that if we are paying for storage, we are paying for energy to keep data alive that will almost certainly never be used again.
One picture won’t “make a drastic impact”, he noted. But if you scroll through your phone and find a hoard of duplicates and screenshots, “that creates quite a big impression in terms of energy consumption”. He finds it “quite a scary thought” that all the renewable energy in the world could not provide the power our data addiction demands.
How to stop the rot
The mantra for the modern age should be: “Think before you thank”.
A study by Ovo found that 49% of Britons frequently email colleagues who sit within talking distance. Instead of clogging the server, walk five metres and say it to their face.
Professor Hodgkinson believes it is critical to eliminate pointless traffic. This includes avoiding what he terms “the dreaded ‘reply all’ button”.
To clean up your digital act, experts suggest the following:
- Consolidate emails to one recipient rather than sending several fragmented messages throughout the day.
- Unsubscribe from mailing lists that are no longer relevant (and actually delete the old newsletters).
- Limit attachments and use links instead.
- Send text-only emails where possible.
- Regularly archive or delete old emails.
- Extend the life of your hardware. A study by the University of Edinburgh found that keeping a computer for six years rather than four saved 190 kg of carbon dioxide.
Email might not be the single largest carbon problem facing humanity, but unlike melting ice caps, it is a problem you can fix from your desk.
