It’s not only greenhouse gases and deforestation that are polluting our planet. Spam and unread emails also contribute to carbon emissions. This happens because emails are transmitted through the Internet and are stored in data centers. According to The Good Planet, as of 2019, 293.6 billion emails are sent per day which is roughly 107 billion spam emails in one day or 24 hours. What is that in energy and emissions?:

– Energy wasted by spam = 33 billion kilowatt-hours =

– Electricity used in 2.4 million homes = 

– The same amount of greenhouse gas emissions as 3.1 million passenger cars =

– 2 billion U.S. gallons of gasoline

If every person in the world with an email account deleted 10 spam emails, they could save 1,725,00 gigabytes of storage space and around 55.2 million kilowatts of power (The Good Planet). In comparison, the average U.S. home uses about 900 kWh per month and more than 61,000 homes could be powered by that same kWh if everyone deleted 10 emails.

Therefore, it’s worthwhile taking a few minutes to clean up your inbox and manage your subscriptions to make the world better by simply deleting emails.