As technology advances, some of our day-to-day practices have disappeared, such as traditional and paper-based mail. We have replaced the old postal model with e-mail. But have you ever thought about how much emailing pollutes the environment?
Why does sending emails pollute?
Sending each email can produce between 1 and 50 grams of CO2, depending on the amount and type of information sent. And globally it can produce around 40 million tonnes of carbon. This is because storing the amount of data sent by email requires a lot of energy, both electricity and water.
The information technology industry spends about 7% of its budget of all the energy used in the world, and the data centre makes use of 21% of the of this, according to Tatiana Muño, Head of Climate Change and Energy at Greenpeace, in an article in the newspaper La Vanguardia.
What will be the result of sending emails if we don’t make a change?
More and more efforts are being made to reverse the damage caused to our planet. In addition to the fight, the use of large amounts of data, and especially the sending of emails, must be controlled.
According to the Energy and Technology institution, it is predicted that by 2025 the amount of CO2 produced will double, which will increase the greenhouse effect.
How to reduce email pollution?
The first step is to be aware of the effect of sending unnecessary emails. One recommendation is to review all the subscriptions you have and unsubscribe, in case you no longer want to receive emails from certain users or companies.
Typical “thank you” and “received” emails are also unnecessary emails, which do not provide more information and could be avoided.
Similarly, messages that are too long and image-heavy require more energy, so trying to shorten messages or compress images would help greatly.
Another recommendation is to empty the mailbox so that data is not stored if it is not needed.
Always connecting via Wi-Fi also helps to reduce energy consumption.
What alternative tools can be used to replace emails?
As we have seen, the exchange of information through emails is not only wasteful, time-consuming and sometimes of no value, but also polluting.
Bounsel Flow is the tool you can use to simplify the sending of mailings to request information for documents or contracts. It is quite intuitive to use.
1. Submit a template in word with the fields that you need to complete.
2. You create an interactive form, or what we call, a flow.
3. Share a flow with whoever you want to complete the form.
4. And you receive the document without lifting a finger on your completed workspace.
A much faster, simpler and more human way to complete documents, without unnecessary emails and errors. Completley FREE!
