They’re not just irritating; they have a massive carbon footprint. Above all, more than 64 million pointless emails are sent in Britain every day. Along with clogging up our inboxes they are also damaging the environment.
Stop! Don’t send that pointless email
Don’t offer thanks or send a jokey message. If you do, you will add to your carbon footprint. Be rude, say nothing – and save the planet. An article published by David Molloy, BBC Technology Reporter, explores the effects of pointless emails on the environment.
A new study commissioned by energy company OVO reckons Brits send more than 64m unnecessary emails every day, and that if every adult in the UK sent one fewer “thank you” email a day we would save more than 16,433 tonnes of carbon a year – equivalent to 81,152 flights to Madrid or taking 3,334 diesel cars off the road.
These are the sorts of stats beloved of green energy companies trying to get a bit of free publicity. But it’s all true, according to Mike Berners-Lee, a professor in the environment centre at Lancaster University, author of How Bad are Bananas: The Carbon Footprint of Everything, and brother of Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the web. True in very general terms anyway: he probably won’t vouch for all those flights.
Do you really need to send the next email? Inside Facebook’s Lulea data centre in Sweden.
Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian
Think before you click send
How can one little pointless email destroy the planet, I ask Mike Berners-Lee, who advised OVO on the research. “When you are typing, your computer is using electricity,” he says. “When you press send it goes through the network, and it takes electricity to run the network. And it’s going to end up being stored on the cloud somewhere, and those data centres use a lot of electricity. We don’t think about it because we can’t see the smoke coming out of our computers, but the carbon footprint of IT is huge and growing.”
The electricity I grasp; the cloud is a bit beyond me. “It’s made up of enormous data centres all over the world,” Berners-Lee explains. “They are burning through huge amounts of electricity.” Super-efficient communication and storage is killing us. Every silver lining has a cloud.
In addition, Berners-Lee admits the numbers are “crude estimates”, but says they are a useful way of making a general point. “When we take a small action to cut carbon,” he says, “it’s a message to yourself that you care about the climate emergency.”
Does he blame his brother for all this? He laughs. “Many good things have come out of the web,” … but only if we use it selectively.
Top 10 most pointless emails sent
- Thank you
- Thanks
- Have a good weekend
- Received
- Appreciated
- Have a good evening
- Did you get/see this?
- Cheers
- You too
- LOL
How LIS help with email support?
Email support is one of the main channels of customer support for most companies today. The majority of customers say that email support is a preferred way to communicate with clients and suppliers.
Do you have a new member of staff? Has a team member left? We support our clients by setting up new email addresses and removing old email accounts. Fed up with receiving junk mail? Our clients benefit from our anti-spam service. Control who you wish to block and make sure junk mail is a thing of the past. Are you secure? We provide anti-virus solutions that help stop outside attacks.
In conclusion, make sure your email systems are set up efficiently and are kept secure. Contact the LIS Help Desk to discuss your options or to book an IT audit.
LIS – SECURING YOUR DIGITAL WORLD
#Emails #ITSupport #AntiSpam #AntiVirus
