Spam
Spam is more than just annoying, it’s killing the planet
This amount requires the 33 billion kilowatt hours (KWh) of electricity, which creates around 20 million tons of CO2e each year!
In total, over 10% of the world’s generated electricity is used for the internet (Source)
How does deleting e-mails reduce my carbon foot print?
What else can I do?
Unsubscribe
One of the easiest ways to reduce these numbers is to unsubscribe from all your unwanted subscriptions. Don’t just delete them, prevent future subscription e-mails from unnecessarily flooding your inbox.
According to the app Leave Me Alone, the average person gets 17 unwanted subscription e-mails each month.
You’re not hurting the company’s feelings. Don’t worry.
Search Wisely
Google schmoogle. Bugle. An average search generates 0.0003 kWh of energy, which is the equivalent of roughly 0.2g of CO2 (Source).
But what about other websites, like Ecosia, a company that plants trees to offset energy use?
In a Quora query titled, “Is Ecosia better for the environment than Google?” Ecosia Social Media Manager Trudie Carter responded with:
Google runs on clean energy, so does Ecosia. In fact, Ecosia recently built its own solar plant to power its servers with renewable energy. This is even better than buying renewable energy from existing plants, as the plant can deliver clean energy to the grid and replace electricity derived from fossil fuels.
So, why does Ecosia win over Google? Because by planting trees and offsetting its energy use with renewables, each search with Ecosia actually removes 1 kg of CO2 from the air, which makes Ecosia a carbon-negative search engine. Here’s the math: an average search generates around 0.005 € of revenue. It costs roughly 0.25 € to plant a tree, which means that Ecosia can plant one tree every 50 searches. On average, these trees will each remove 50 kg of CO2 during an expected 15 year lifetime.
This means that if Ecosia were as big as Google, it could absorb 15% of all global CO2 emissions! That’s enough to offset vehicle emissions worldwide. Just imagine how much quicker the world could solve climate change if Google invested its profits – $23 billion in 2016 – into planting trees.
–Trudie Carter, Social Media Manager at Ecosia:
So if you have a moment, go through your old e-mail and try to clear your inbox, spam filter, etc.
Unsubscribe from those annoying e-mails you keep deleting
Zero Waste California 
Wow, I had no idea about most of this! Thanks for sharing your research!
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