Many of us believe that by using email for daily correspondence and to keep in touch with friends, we are cutting down on our ecological footprint. We have reduced our paper consumption and in turn, saved trees from being cut down for paper production. We are also able to save all the mail messages as most email services provide huge storage capabilities. We don’t delete any mail for we like to gloat over the fact that so many of our friends write to us and vice versa. But do we ever spare a thought to the fact that there might be severe consequence of keeping our inboxes choc-a-block with mail?
Yes, it’s true. We may not be helping the environment as much as we would like to believe. In fact the reverse may be the case. Contrary to general assumption, digital files do not exist in a limbo. All data is stored in a physical space that requires energy. The more the data, the more the space required to store it, which in turn means more energy consumed. We may have stopped using paper but it is not really a boon for the environment. We have simply switched from our dependence on one energy resource to another.
The truth is that Internet uses as much or more energy as any heavy industry. The next question then is how much energy are we consuming by keeping our email inboxes filled up. It is impossible to gauge the exact number as most studies are outdated. Till some time back it was believed that it required 0.45 kg coal to store 2 MB of data. Later it was calculated to be about 1 kg coal for 20-40MB. This figure too may be out of date by now. However it is certain that three per cent of energy consumption in the US is by the Internet. There are other factors too. The energy usage also depends on where the data is stored, from where is it accessed and how often. The only thing that is constant is the fact that less data translates into less usage of energy.
So, the next time you open your email, check the number of messages you have stored over the years and decide whether it is really important to keep all those mails you will probably never read again in your lifetime.
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