The Spam Effect: Why Unwanted Emails Are Destructive for the Environment

Is there anything more annoying than yet another unsolicited electronic advertisement? Just today I was offered a free trial on colon cleaning products, a revolutionary way to turn my water bottle into an energy booster, an opportunity to save money on healthcare, and a list of free houses in my neighborhood. Spam. Internet junk.

Not only is spam a nuisance and a drain on your time, it's harmful to the environment.

Eco-friendly practices are fortunately on the rise. Most of us are doing what we can to help the environment. Thinking globally and acting locally. Doing our small part for the greater good. Most of us know the basics: conserving water, reducing paper consumption, recycling cans and bottles. One of the lesser-known environmental offenders, however, is spam email. The enormous energy consumption required to manage the cyber junk we know as spam is mind blowing.

Increased Spam: The Environmental Problem.

The well-known security technology company McAfee Avert Labs Inc., released a study analyzing the carbon footprint of spam this week. The study found, and I quote: 'the amount of energy it takes annually to transmit, process and filter spam from around the world is estimated to be equal to the electricity used in 2.4 million homes in a year'. That is a tremendous amount of electricity.

The study sliced these facts many ways to clearly communicate the destructive nature of spam emails. Another way of looking at the data is this: on an annual basis, spam emails produce greenhouse gas emissions equal to 3.1 million automobiles using 2 billion gallons of gasoline. Whoa.

The study was conducted in conjunction with the consulting firm ICF International, and outlines how emissions from global email spam generate 17 million metric tons of carbon dioxide per year. That equals 0.2% of total greenhouse gas emissions.

These are big numbers. And everyone has at least one email address, so it adds up quickly. For instance, if you take the quantities of unwanted emails delivered to individual inboxes daily and multiply this by the global number of internet subscribers you'll get an idea of the astounding number of internet junk pinging around cyberspace. In fact, this report indicates that 62 trillion trash emails were generated in 2008 alone.

According to one Palo Alto consulting group, the number of unwanted email messages globally in 2008 was 164 billion per day. Every single email is associated 0.3 grams of carbon dioxide released as greenhouse gas which is the equivalent of driving three feet. Okay, that may not seem like much to you. If you look at the total on an annual basis, however, the volume of spam each year releases enough greenhouse gas emissions to drive around the earth 1.6 million times.

Microsoft recently released figures that indicate a whopping 97% of emails delivered to your inbox are spam.

Reduced Spam: The Environmental Solution.

The common sense solution to reduce incoming spam is to be selective about your internet searches and careful about where you leave your email address. It's also good practice to use spam-filtering technology and make sure your email provider has current spam filters in place.

Microsoft offers additional helpful tips for avoiding spam emails thereby reducing our global impact on the environment:

Get tricky. A complicated email address that combines letters, numbers and alternative characters draws less spam than an email address that's easy to guess.

Take great caution when sharing your e-mail or instant message address; only do so with people you know personally.

Do not list your primary e-mail address on Internet directories, discussion boards or job-posting Web sites.

Use a free email service to set up an e-mail address specifically for Web transactions. If the spam gets out-of-hand, close the account and open a new one.

Avoid pre-checked boxes that indicate your consent for the vendor to sell or give your e-mail address to other companies.

Sources:

San Francisco Chronicle
http://www.sfgate.com/

Microsoft Corporation
http://www.microsoft.com/protect/default.mspx

McAfee Avert Labs
http://www.mcafee.com/us/