I looked through my computer archives to see what emails I have saved that I did not need to keep; there are plenty. As a matter of fact there are way too many. The example above is a perfect example of wasted energy!
When you fail to delete an email, it gets saved on a hard drive. The system is typically backed up to a secondary location. Saving unneeded emails is literally a waste of energy.
So, should you delete those old emails?
Of course the answer is yes, but why?
There are a number of factors that go into the impact that email and retention of email has on the environment. Some are:
- Energy to run the hard drive
- Energy for the backup of the hard drive system
- Energy to keep the drives cool
- Energy and resources it takes to manufacture drives, cables, computers, data centers, etc.
So what can you do about it?
If you are fortunate enough to have a limit to the amount of email data that you can retain, it is a blessing. Typically you must delete emails and make room prior to being able to send an email.
If you have unlimited or a large amount of data capacity, it is best if you can delete the emails the minute you are done reading them. If not, consider going through your emails from the previous week and deleting those you do not need. For example, this Monday morning I went through last Monday’s emails. I deleted all but one. Also, I found one item that I needed to work on.
Auto archive and deletion is another option. Work with your computer administrator or look online on how to set your system up with this preference.
I was unable to find research on how much energy it takes to store an email, but be aware that it does take energy and multiply the number of emails times all users…it is a very large number. One positive solution created by email system administrators is that emails are only stored once, so for 12 recipients, there is actually only one copy of the mail. In addition, there is continual improvement of storage systems and storage management. We will continue to see improvements in this area over time. In the meantime, we all can do our part to have minimal impact through email.