Why do You need to clean up Your email inbox?
Have you ever thought how much energy is consumed from storing your old emails?
Zero Waste isn’t just about reducing plastic waste it’s about reusing and conserving resources and trying to create a circular economy. The first R of the Zero Waste 5 R’s is Refuse, the second is Reduce.
Therefore, if we can find ways of saving energy that’s another step in the right direction for Zero Waste.Email has become part of our everyday lives, but do we ever stop and consider the impact that storing all these emails has on our planet?
Email providers store our emails on their servers which are consuming energy 24 hours a day. This means the more messages we keep the more servers they need to store them, and the more energy consumed.
How Much Energy Could you save
A study by ICF International and McAfee estimated that 1 GB of email uses 32.1kwh per year.
And, Cleanfox estimates that an email is on average responsible for the emission of 10 grams of Co2 per year, and if the Internet were a country, it would be the sixth biggest electricity consumer in the world.
The telecoms company Orange say:
if every single person in France deleted 50 emails, the energy savings would be equivalent to turning the Eiffel tower’s lights off for 42 years, or to New York City not consuming any electricity for 4 hours.
So, why not start saving energy today and clean up your inbox. Below I’ve got some handy tips on how to keep your inbox clear.
Tips to keep your inbox clean and tidy
- Refuse – turn off unnecessary notifications from things like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest etc they just clog up your inbox and give you more to tidy up.
- Reduce – every month check which newsletters and companies you’re subscribed to and unsubscribe from any you no longer find useful. There’s even an App that will help you do it Cleanfox
- Review – once a month review your emails, especially ones with large attachments, and delete the ones you no longer need. You can also archive ones you may want to keep as you can compress the files and reduce space.
- Clear it out – empty your deleted and Junk E-mail folder regularly. You can check to see if you can set this up automatically.
Have you got hundreds of emails or do you have a regular routine in place for reviewing them, I’d love to hear if you have any useful tips.
Great advice here. I agree having a once a month review to see what you can unsubscribe to and get rid off really will help your inbox look a lot healthier!
Great tips. I’ve recently started unsubscribing to emails as I was getting so much junk it was untrue. I also make sure I clean my junk regularly and report spam accordingly.
I know what you mean, sometimes I can’t even remember why I subscribed to them !
Oh my gosh. I am so naive I had never even considered my lack of organisation in my email inbox might be having such an impact. I’m off to empty it
oh my my, this is so useful information. Didn’t knew deleting email helped environment this much. I am off to clear up my email. Thanks
Have fun 😉
I try and keep on top of this, at least once a week other wise I end up with so many. I even ran out of storage on my Google drive at one point.
It’s great if you can get into the habit of doing it every week as it makes it much easier to keep on top of
Oh wow I had no idea! My inbox is in dire need of organising, it drives me crazy every day! Im going to make an effort to get it done this week!
I know it’s just one of those things that always gets put to the bottom of the list
Oh my I had NEVER thought of this! I always keep my work emails in order but I’m guilty of storing all sorts of junk in my personal account. I will definitely be going to clear them out asap
There is so much spam in my inboxes that I need to work on, thanks for the tips
I never even thought about emails using energy before. I really do need a good clear out. Great tips.