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Home Environment

Those ‘thank you!’ emails are ruining the environment

Unecessary e-mails are responsible for as much CO2 as thousands of cars.

Fermin Koop by Fermin Koop
November 27, 2019
in Environment, Environmental Issues, News, Science
Reading Time: 2 mins read
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Sending more emails than you should many not only be pointless but also bad for the environment, according to a new study focused in the UK, which showed the high carbon footprint emails can have.

Credit Wikipedia Commons

OVO Energy, England’s leading energy supply company, commissioned a study and used the UK as a case study. Among the results, the study showed that Brits send more than 64 million unnecessary emails every day, which contributes to 23,475 tons of carbon a year to its footprint.

If every adult in the UK sent one fewer “thank you” email a day it would allow saving more than 16,433 tons of carbon a year. This is equivalent to 81,152 flights to Madrid or taking 3,334 diesel cars off the road.

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Among the most “unnecessary” emails, the report included those that say “Thank you,” “Thanks,” “Have a good weekend,” “Received,” “Appreciated,” “Have a good evening,” “Did you get/see this,” “Cheers,” “You too,” and “LOL,” according to the study.

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The results also showed that 71% of the Brits wouldn’t mind not receiving a “thank you” email “if they knew it was for the benefit of the environment and helping to combat the climate crisis.”Also, 87% said “would be happy to reduce their email traffic to help support the same cause,” according to the study.

Mike Berners-Lee, a professor at Lancaster University in Lancashire, England and one of the study authors, said that while the carbon footprint is not highly significant “it’s a great illustration of the broader principle that cutting the waste out of our lives is good for our wellbeing and good for the environment.”

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“Every time we take a small step towards changing our behavior, be that sending fewer emails or carrying a reusable coffee cup, we need to treat it as a reminder to ourselves and others that we care even more about the really big carbon decisions,” Berners-Lee said.

This is not the first time a study looks at the environmental footprint of emails. Research by McAfee in 2010 showed that 78% of all incoming emails are spam. Around 62 trillion spam messages are sent every year, requiring the use of 33 illion kilowatt-hours (KWh) of electricity and causing around 20 million tonnes of CO2e per year.

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Fermin Koop

Fermin Koop

Fermin Koop is a reporter from Buenos Aires, Argentina. He holds an MSc from Reading University (UK) on Environment and Development and is specialized in environment and climate change news.

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