Please Think Before Sending

by Adam Ruscoe

23rd November 2020

STOP & THINK

Losing Touch

As science & technology have screamed forward at break neck speed, man has lost touch with how things work, and what we are doing.

Our ancestors had vast ranging knowledge & skills. Botanical knowledge and practical crafts meant people made everything they used.

Today we have lost much of this wisdom. Sewing & knitting are dying trades, amateur mechanics can’t tinker with robotic cars, people don’t grow, process and make with wood, Ikea has seen to that…technology is responsible for huge losses in collective human knowledge.

It’s impossible for the normal person to know how their day to day life works. Not many of the public have a knowledge of computer sciences, and seeing as computers run your everyday, we are ALL out of touch with what’s happening and what we are doing.

Let’s take one example, we all use the emails, we don’t really have much of an idea of how it works, it’s too infinitely complicated for most humans to even fathom…let’s take a look at what the internet really is!

These images are some of Google’s Data Centres around the world. This is where lots of the internet lives, including emails, see more here: https://www.google.co.uk/about/datacenters/gallery/

Other companies have other data centres, but let’s look at this for an idea…now let’s also note, these companies are some of the biggest, wealthiest and most powerful organisations the species has ever known. And it’s not to say they are some of the smartest regarding energy…read up and get familiar with their approach…

But let’s ask ourselves, what are small things we can do?

Take a look at this great article by The Carbon Literacy Project – “The Carbon Cost of an Email”

One thing we all do daily and without much thought, is send out lots of unnecessary emails. All of what we do online comes with a carbon consequence. Knowing and understanding this is important.

All the time and emails that you can cut will help reduce your personal carbon footprint.

So please, try and keep up with what is happening in the world around us, what happens as a result of our collective behaviours…if we are chip in, we can all change the world!

Help cut carbon emissions by sending only thoughtful and necessary emails. Be part of the solution! We can’t live without digital, but we can live smarter with digital!

Food for thought…

Direct from the Carbon Literacy Project:

“So it’s no surprise that once Carbon Literate, it becomes apparent that everything and every aspect of life has a carbon footprint – no matter how small or seemingly insignificant. This includes the email you just sent.

Below are the average carbon footprints of different emails:

An average spam email: 0.3 g CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent)

A standard email: 4 g CO2e

An email with “long and tiresome attachments”: 50 g CO2e

This information is taken from the book by Mike Berners-Lee: ‘How Bad are Bananas?: The Carbon Footprint of Everything’ (2010). Mike Burners-Lee is the brother of Tim Burners-Lee, (the guy who invented the world wide web) two pretty smart guys if you ask me.

This might not initially seem like a lot, but when you consider the number of emails sent and received, it’s easy to see how this can add up. Let’s take a look –

It is estimated that the average office worker receives 121 emails per day, and that half of these will be spam (Global News). Based on my own emails, the remaining half is almost equally comprised of those with and without attachments (those with attachments predominantly have more than one).

So…60.5 spam emails x 0.3 g CO2e = 18.5 g CO2e
30.25 standard emails x 4 g CO2e = 121 g CO2e
30.25 emails with attachments x 50 g CO2e = 1512.5 g CO2e

This means that a days’ worth of emails received is equal to 1,652 g CO2e…

And that one years’ worth of emails received equals 603,393 g CO2e = 0.593863329 or 0.6 tonnes CO2e

To put this into perspective, the total yearly carbon footprint of the average person living in India is approx 1.5 tonnes CO2e(Climate Outreach).

By this account, it takes just three average office workers’ yearly received emails to surpass that of another human’s carbon footprint for all their activity for a whole year.

I bet your emails don’t seem quite so insignificant now?”

Fools & Dreamers – A MUST WACTH!

Kiss the Ground – A MUST WATCH!

Please Think Before Sending

STOP & THINK

Losing Touch

Direct from the Carbon Literacy Project:

“So it’s no surprise that once Carbon Literate, it becomes apparent that everything and every aspect of life has a carbon footprint – no matter how small or seemingly insignificant. This includes the email you just sent.

Below are the average carbon footprints of different emails:

An average spam email: 0.3 g CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent)

A standard email: 4 g CO2e

An email with “long and tiresome attachments”: 50 g CO2e

This information is taken from the book by Mike Berners-Lee: ‘How Bad are Bananas?: The Carbon Footprint of Everything’ (2010). Mike Burners-Lee is the brother of Tim Burners-Lee, (the guy who invented the world wide web) two pretty smart guys if you ask me.

This might not initially seem like a lot, but when you consider the number of emails sent and received, it’s easy to see how this can add up. Let’s take a look –

It is estimated that the average office worker receives 121 emails per day, and that half of these will be spam (Global News). Based on my own emails, the remaining half is almost equally comprised of those with and without attachments (those with attachments predominantly have more than one).

So…60.5 spam emails x 0.3 g CO2e = 18.5 g CO2e
30.25 standard emails x 4 g CO2e = 121 g CO2e
30.25 emails with attachments x 50 g CO2e = 1512.5 g CO2e

This means that a days’ worth of emails received is equal to 1,652 g CO2e…

And that one years’ worth of emails received equals 603,393 g CO2e = 0.593863329 or 0.6 tonnes CO2e

To put this into perspective, the total yearly carbon footprint of the average person living in India is approx 1.5 tonnes CO2e(Climate Outreach).

By this account, it takes just three average office workers’ yearly received emails to surpass that of another human’s carbon footprint for all their activity for a whole year.

I bet your emails don’t seem quite so insignificant now?”

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Please Think Before Sending

STOP & THINK

Losing Touch

Direct from the Carbon Literacy Project:

“So it’s no surprise that once Carbon Literate, it becomes apparent that everything and every aspect of life has a carbon footprint – no matter how small or seemingly insignificant. This includes the email you just sent.

Below are the average carbon footprints of different emails:

An average spam email: 0.3 g CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent)

A standard email: 4 g CO2e

An email with “long and tiresome attachments”: 50 g CO2e

This information is taken from the book by Mike Berners-Lee: ‘How Bad are Bananas?: The Carbon Footprint of Everything’ (2010). Mike Burners-Lee is the brother of Tim Burners-Lee, (the guy who invented the world wide web) two pretty smart guys if you ask me.

This might not initially seem like a lot, but when you consider the number of emails sent and received, it’s easy to see how this can add up. Let’s take a look –

It is estimated that the average office worker receives 121 emails per day, and that half of these will be spam (Global News). Based on my own emails, the remaining half is almost equally comprised of those with and without attachments (those with attachments predominantly have more than one).

So…60.5 spam emails x 0.3 g CO2e = 18.5 g CO2e 30.25 standard emails x 4 g CO2e = 121 g CO2e 30.25 emails with attachments x 50 g CO2e = 1512.5 g CO2e

This means that a days’ worth of emails received is equal to 1,652 g CO2e…

And that one years’ worth of emails received equals 603,393 g CO2e = 0.593863329 or 0.6 tonnes CO2e

To put this into perspective, the total yearly carbon footprint of the average person living in India is approx 1.5 tonnes CO2e(Climate Outreach).

By this account, it takes just three average office workers’ yearly received emails to surpass that of another human’s carbon footprint for all their activity for a whole year.

I bet your emails don’t seem quite so insignificant now?”

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Stay up to date!

So…60.5 spam emails x 0.3 g CO2e = 18.5 g CO2e
30.25 standard emails x 4 g CO2e = 121 g CO2e
30.25 emails with attachments x 50 g CO2e = 1512.5 g CO2e