Unnecessary promotional emails are responsible for 2 million tonnes of CO2 emissions every year in the United Kingdom, Cleanfox reveals

PARIS, Feb. 18, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- If Internet were a country, it would be the 6th biggest polluter in the world. Yet only 30% of the UK population has heard of digital pollution!

With 3.5 million emails sent every second in 2020 and a carbon footprint of 10g per email, emails play an undeniable role in pollution caused by the internet. Cleanfox, the application for cleaning up your inbox and reducing your carbon footprint, did some research into email pollution using exclusive data from its panel of 3,500,000 users.

Click here to download the study: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/fgjdmlazt8uo1p7/AACjfs7Q83m08m2QOW2mZDTQa?dl=0 

In 2020, the average UK resident received 4250 promotional emails, of which 3357 were never opened...

In 2020, the newsletters received by one UK resident were responsible for 42kg of CO2 emissions, which is the equivalent of 350 km in a Mini. Only 21% of these emails were opened. Not only does this clutter up inboxes, but it also generates a lot of pollution. In fact, unnecessary promotional emails have an annual carbon footprint of 33kg per person, which equates to 275 km in a car.

There is significant inequality between generations and genders in terms of this problem!

Generation X is the generation whose inboxes pollute the most with 5155 unopened newsletters in 2020, which equates to the carbon footprint of 430 km in a car.

On average, we note that women are targeted more by newsletters as they receive 1476 more newsletters than men.

A problem that becomes a real scourge over 10 years

The newsletters received by one UK resident in 2020 have a carbon footprint of 42kg of CO2. If you don't clean up your inbox for 10 years, it will generate a carbon footprint of 2.36 tonnes, which is more than a roundtrip flight between London and Istanbul.

Fortunately, this scourge is easy to get rid of

If all UK residents deleted their unwanted emails, that would prevent 2 million tonnes of CO2 emissions each year. Which is the equivalent of the pollution generated by a city of 370,000 inhabitants, like Cardiff for example, in one year.

There are lots of solutions for reducing your digital carbon footprint

Here is a list of easy things to do:

Limit the number of recipients for each mail, clean your inbox with Cleanfox, reduce streaming quality.

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Contact:
Anaïs Ould,
anais@cleanfox.io