Like an old diesel engine, email attachment technology developed in the 1970s and widely used today releases millions of tons of CO2 into our atmosphere. Recent estimates attribute about 19g of CO2 (Bio Intelligence Service (french study) generated by each email containing an attachment. The carbon impact is largely the result of the infrastructure needed to transmit and process the message, such as data centers that consume electricity to store, transfer, process and analyze the message content.
The negative impact of large files on the environment
While 19 grams of CO2, less than the CO2 of an imported banana (80 grams), may not seem like much in itself, what ultimately makes attachments so harmful is the number that are sent unnecessarily. It is estimated that each professional ignores an average of 6,000 attachments per year. The common business practice of unnecessarily copying and sharing files that are not read; threatening data security, defying information governance and reducing productivity. The average office worker receives approximately 144 irrelevant messages per day, 24% of which have attachments.
Since every attachment generates CO2 emissions, we can easily calculate that unread attachments generate a lot of CO2 every day for every worker. Over the course of a year, with 261 working days, the annual CO2 footprint of unwanted, unread and ignored attachments creates approximately 13.6 tons of CO2 or almost 13 round trips from Paris to New York.
How to send your large files while limiting your carbon impact?
It’s easier than you think. Users can replace attachments with eco-friendly file transfer links. We’re not talking about cloud storage like OneDrive, Google Drive or Amazon. Indeed, these servers are not powered by renewable energy.
You can now send your files via free FileVert links. Providing a link ensures that files are only distributed to the 6% who actually want the attachment, eliminating resource consumption and CO2 emissions. Mentioned with the added benefits of containing data proliferation, enabling large file transfers and reducing security and information governance risks.
To further protect the environment, FileVert also uses renewable energy and is committed at all times to the fight to preserve the planet.