Digital

Impact of email attachments on energy consumption

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Objectives

• define energy consumption of sending attachments
• make people aware of email related CO2 consumption over the year

Green Value indicator

• Energy intensity, Eco footprint
• By keeping email file attachments to a minimum and instead sharing documents on flash drives, you reduce the amount of CO2 released in the atmosphere
• Email CO2 footprints can vary from 0.3g CO2 for spam to 4g CO2 for regular emails and 50g for email with a photo or attachment

Explanation

Nowadays, it is very common to attach files to e-mails, but we do not pay attention to the amount of CO2 that is released. Although each individual attachment does not itself produce much CO2, this amount is multiplied by the number of attachments sent within a month or a year, before we even take into account the times this email has been forwarded.

1. To look at how much carbon is released, you can check this page: Page

2. To know how much carbon is released within a month, you must multiply the amount of carbon emissions per attachment with the average number of emails containing attachments per month.

3. You can do the same for a year, to find out the approximate amount of CO2 that is released in that time.

You can critically reflect on the impact of your emails with attachments and adopt different strategies to be more sustainable without compromising the aim of your action or the purpose of your message. Some points to reflect on include:

• The way you have summarised the information and if you have included unnecessary information.
• The possible alternatives to the email, and whether it is possible to use a USB within an office instead.
• If it is possible to compress the file into an archive.
• Whether or not it is possible to use pdf format, which is smaller and easier to transfer.
• Is there an image file embedded in your email signature?

PROS/CONS of the action

Pros:

• It is important to know how much carbon is released to increase awareness
• More organised and tidy way of communicating and transferring documents
• More conscious and efficient usage of email communication

Cons:

• Zipping files and checking file sizes is time consuming
• Transferring files physically requires more time and organisation with colleagues

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Link to useful sources

Why your internet habits are not as clean as you think

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The Carbon Cost of an Email

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