Millions of unnecessary emails sent daily can cause environmental damage. The UK officials are seeking ways to deal with such unnecessary emails that pose a threat to the environment.
According to the Financial Times report, UK officials participating in the UN COP26 climate change summit in Glasgow next year looked at last year’s research, which suggests that unnecessary emails cause environmental damage.
In OVO Energy research conducted late last year, 49% of UK residents admitted to sending unwanted emails every day. They say emails like ‘Thank you!’, ‘Cheers’, ‘No worries’, ‘LOL’ are just a few examples that may be unnecessary. The study noted that sending one fewer emails per day will save 16,000 tonnes of carbon per year.
“We’ve been looking at research suggesting that if you reduced those emails by just one a day, you would save a lot of carbon,” said one person involved in COP26 preparations.
Although small, data traffic, such as an email or tweet, has a carbon footprint coming from the electricity on the devices used to write and send emails.
Experts say that the networks that transfer data and the data centres that store it both have a carbon footprint. They also estimate that these centres account for less than 0.1% of the world’s carbon footprint. While cars make up 20% of the world’s carbon footprints, this is a small figure.