Behind the scenes, we’re always looking at ways to run our business in a more sustainable and planet friendly way.
Recently, we’ve become aware of the carbon footprint of emails. Admittedly, the amount of carbon footprint produced by an individual email is tiny but when combined, these emails can add up to a staggering amount. So we’ve made a conscious decision to send fewer emails. Emailing may be a carbon efficient method of communication – but only when used appropriately!
Some stats surprised us:
- Over 64 million unnecessary emails are sent by Brits every day*
- If we all sent just one less email a day it would save over 16,433 tonnes of carbon a year. (Estimated as the same as over 81,000 flights from Heathrow to Madrid*)
- Each year, the carbon associated with sending and receiving emails for a typical business user is equivalent to driving a car for 200 miles**
Email still remains a relatively environmentally friendly means of communicating but we can still collectively help make things better.
So, we have made some changes to the way we work. It’s not always easy and it often goes against instinct. But we are trying our best to make a difference by doing things in a different way:
- Sending fewer emails. Being more succinct and covering multiple points.
- Picking up the phone when it makes more sense to!
- Sending emails to fewer people. (e.g unless requested, we don’t copy in groups of people)
- Reducing the number of attachments we send.
- Reducing “unnecessary” emails. Now this is a tough one – we are British after all. But we’re trying to avoid sending too many short, courtesy emails. (Thanks, LOL, Have a great weekend!)
- Deleting emails. This may be a small gesture but this reduces the amount of energy used to store them in data centres.
- Unsubscribing from newsletters we don’t read.
So this is our starting point. We know we won’t be perfectly efficient for a while. But we’re going to try!
*OVO **BBC