So you’re getting a constant stream of emails from every company and website possible? Here’s what you do: unsubscribe. Take the thirty minutes, or even the hour that is necessary and unsubscribe from all of those newsletters that you opted into but never once read. This simple action will save you time and help the planet. Okay so you’re asking yourself, what is really so bad about our email inboxes? Typing, sending, and receiving an email requires electricity. In most instances, we get this electricity by burning fossil fuels. Of course, we need power for anything we do but those data centers that are required for storing all these countless emails need lots of electricity for powering all these computers and thousands of liters of water for cooling.

Let’s be honest, half of our emails are simply junk that never gets read. According to carbon footprint specialist Mike Berners-Lee, one spam email generates 0.3 grams of CO2; a proper email emits around 4 grams, and the one with a long attachment almost 50 grams. On average, a working professional gets 121 emails every day. That’s lots of CO2- annually it adds up to 0.6 tons of CO2 emissions and increases our carbon footprint. So can we do about it?

Do a digital detox

Unsubscribe from newsletters that you rarely or never read. I will help to keep your inbox organized and reduce your carbon footprint. It’ll also help you rediscover newsletters that you love but… may have forgotten about due to the inundation of other newsletters flying into your inbox.

Turn off social media notifications

Emails with notifications from Facebook and LinkedIn are just duplicates of the information that you receive on the social platform, meaning… you guessed it, more CO2.

Take your trash out regularly

Remember, storing emails in our junk folder also requires energy. Just imagine that junk from your inbox should exist in multiple copies on a server. If one service in the data center is down, information can still be accessed from another one.

Make one better decision every day

Cleaning up your email inbox to reduce your carbon footprint is not so difficult but it will help our planet in a long-run. All of the little things you are able to do to live sustainably will add up, starting with cleaning out all of the junk.