Energy is consumed when sending, reading and storing an email. Therefore, messages kept in your mailbox are a source of numerical pollution. The carbon footprint of an email is around 10 grams of CO2 per year. Thus, it is essential to delete the polluting emails, spams, the sent emails… and to definitely unsubscribe from useless newsletters.
Why do emails create pollution?
Emails heavily contribute to the numerical pollution because of its energy consumption and the rate of CO2 emitted. A received or sent email leaves a non-negligible energetic impact. It is important to know that the energy used by an email with a file attached is the equivalent of 25 Watts/hours. Hence, deleting 30 emails is the equivalent of saving a lightbulbs’ daily energy consumption.
Before reaching the receiver’s inbox, an email must go through several different servers. Thus, these kept emails are stored in data centers that require a constant cool down. Deleting these polluting emails is a real eco friendly gesture. Moreover, you contribute to optimising your personal data security, especially when deleting spams from your mailbox.
The tricks to fight against polluting emails
You could sort your emails instead of reading them one by one before deleting them:
- Sort them by folder or tags in order to render the task easier
- Identify the heaviest messages which contain attached files
- Save those you deem useful and delete all the rest
Cleaning your inbox is not sufficient to get rid of polluting emails. You also need to clean your outbox, your trash and your spam folder.
Empty out your spam folder
Undesirable emails are usually directly sent to your spam folder. Furthemore, the same thing happens to emails coming from websites which received your prior consent but have a dubious email address. Then, your mailbox can filter them before sending them to your spam folder.
You should never answer to spams, just to be safe. These are automatically deleted of your spam folder after 30 days. Nevertheless, it is preferable to get rid of them before the 30 days delay in order to free space in your storage and increase your device’s performances. In order to stop receiving emails coming from a spammer, add him to your blacklist.
Empty out your trash
The trash allows you to store messages that have been deleted. The deleted emails automatically disappear after 30 days. Before this deadline, it is possible to retrieve an email that was deleted by mistake.
The act of regularly emptying your trash contributes to reducing the numerical pollution. Indeed, stored messages also consume energy.
Clean your mailbox with Cleanfox
Cleanfox is an eco-friendly tool designed to delete polluting emails and unsubscribe from useless newsletters. It is also an efficient anti-spam which enables you to delete spams in a single click.
In order to use this software, you simply need to link it to your mailbox. Cleanfox then proceeds to sorting out your messages based on their senders. You will be surprised to notice that your mailbox has been invaded by all kinds of polluting emails. As such, you should delete them and/or unsubscribe from the newsletters and reduce your carbon footprint at the same time. Moreover, Cleanfox will give you the statistics of your gesture by displaying the quantity of CO2 emitted, once your mailbox has been cleaned.
