Send fewer emails to ‘save planet’

Computer users have been urged to send fewer emails in order to help save the planet, after research shows people in the UK send 64 million “unnecessary” messages every year.

Researchers say one- or two-word replies such as ‘thanks’ or ‘you too’ are mostly pointless. If everyone sent just one fewer email every day it would help cut the UK’S carbon footprint by 16,000 tonnes per year, they claim.

They say that in one year the energy produced by email servers, networks and systems creates a carbon footprint equivalent to 81,152 flights to Madrid.

The study, commissioned by energy company OVO and led by Professor Mike Berners-lee of Lancaster University, found that 49 per cent of Brits say they send emails to colleagues and friends within talking distance every day.

Nearly three-quarters of people aren’t aware that sending emails leaves a carbon footprint.

Professor Berners-lee, whose brother Tim invented the World Wide Web in 1989, called the figures a “broad estimate” of the environmental impact of emails.

He said: “The carbon happens when you’re at your machine, when you’re tapping your email out, and then you send it and the network uses some electricity to send it, and then will end up being stored in the cloud, which again will take up electricity”.

He added that while we’re more efficient at storing data, we’ve become less disciplined at using it.

See ‘What’s all the Fuss About’ on Smart Compose, page 49