The carbon footprint of a single email is negligible, but new
research from ICF International and McAfee shows that the 62
trillion spam emails sent each year waste 33 billion kilowatt
hours of power, or enough to power 2.4 million homes. The
majority of energy is wasted at the end user's computer in
sifting through messages to find and delete spam. There's a
relatively easy solution to this massive energy suck: install a
spam filter or use an email service like Gmail that provides a
built-in filter. If everyone took that simple step, it would be
the energy equivalent of taking 2.3 million cars off the road.
That's unlikely to happen, but there are immediate benefits for
companies that take the initiative for spam filtering. According
to ICF, a single business user spends 28 kg of CO2 on spam email
each year. Removing spam from that person's email equation would
be the same as eliminating 93 km of driving. For a 1000-person
company, it's the same as taking five cars off the road. We're
far too reliant on emai