How can emails “contribute” to carbon emissions?

Question

After the “Let the Earth Breathe” news circulated on my social media homepage, one of the things I have read is to delete unwanted/unread/spam emails as one of the means I can contribute to the mitigation of carbon emissions.

How true is this, and why?

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In: 8

Answer 1

Email uses TCP/IP packets sent between computers. All those computers and network boxes run on electricity. In many countries the grid is far from 100% renewable, so it takes carbon emissions to make the electricity to send the email. Nothing like the emissions to send a paper letter through the post, but hardly 0.