New research suggests not responding to emails when it's unnecessary. A vindication for those of you with annoying coworkers. But what do we mean?
A new study commissioned by OVO energy and carried out in the UK estimates that users send more than 64 million unnecessary emails every day and that if every adult in the UK sent one less “thank you” email we would save more than 16,433 tonnes of carbon annually, equivalent to taking 81,152 flights to Madrid or taking 3,334 diesel cars off the road.
Many people think these statistics are some of the darlings of environmentalists trying to get some free publicity. But, on the other hand, it's true, according to Mike Berners-Lee, a professor at the environment center at Lancaster University, author of How Bad are Bananas: The Carbon Footprint of Everything, and brother of Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the web.
How can an email destroy the planet?
"When you type, computer uses electricity. When you hit send, it goes through the network and it takes electricity to run the network. It's going to end up being stored somewhere in the cloud and those data centers use a lot of electricity. We don't think about it because we can't see the smoke coming from our computers, but the carbon footprint of computing is huge and growing," Berners-Lee explains.
Huge data centers around the world are burning through vast amounts of electricity. Over-communication and data storage is killing us.
Berners-Lee admits that the numbers are "rough estimates," but says they are a useful way to draw a general conclusion.
Does he blame his brother for all of this? “A lot of good things have come out of the internet,” … but only if we use it selectively.
Now, when we upload this article, it's like we're invalidating his opinion, but don't get me wrong.
