The environmental impact of our cluttered inboxes

Everything we do online has a real world environmental impact. From the emails in our inboxes to photos and videos on the cloud, our digital files are stored on physical servers that constantly use energy.

Loving this website https://thanks-in-advance.com/ which spotlights the environmental impact of our cluttered inboxes. It’s filled with facts about our digital footprint more broadly and practical tips on how we can all make a difference.

If you don’t have time to read the whole thing, here are the top tips:

• Managing Newsletters — Only 20% of newsletters are ever actually opened. This means that 80% are just languishing in your inbox. Of those you do open, the majority you’ll only read once, so why not delete them as you go? Cleanfox is a handy tool that will delete your old newsletters and unsubscribe you from the ones you don’t open. And it’s free!
• Deleting calendar invites — when you receive email invitations to meetings and events, remember to delete them once you’ve accepted or declined the invite. It’s also possible to delete them in bulk using a keyword search for the file extension (for example search invite.ics)
• Reducing File Sizes — not all emails have the same footprint — the ones with large attachments have a higher carbon cost. You can reduce the size of your emails by thinking about the type of content you send and keeping file sizes to a minimum. SmallPDF reduces the file size of PDFs sent as attachments and helps to reduce the carbon weight of the message.
• Erasing Old Accounts — apart from the fact that unused email accounts pose a privacy and security risk, the majority just sit there amassing more spam mail. Why not get rid of them? You’ll be safer and your footprint will be instantly lighter.

Every file hosted online is stored on a server that requires energy to heat, cool, power, and access. This includes emails, but also websites. So they ensured when they built their website, it’s at least 97% greener than most sites. They provide tips on how to do this as well!