Hi fellow students,
My name is Charon, and I am the Faculty Rep for Wellbeing, Education and Language Studies (WELS). I am also a sustainability ambassador for Open SU. As we move into 2026, I thought I would share how undeleted emails affect our carbon footprint, which both the OU and Open SU are working to reduce.
By deleting our emails, we can have a positive impact on our environment, with an emphasis on reducing our carbon emissions. Below are some key reasons for deleting your emails. While the individual impact of deleting an email may seem insignificant as a population, deleting an email can considerably support our environmental sustainability and reduce our carbon footprint. Here’s why:
Energy consumption: Emails which are stored in the cloud use energy from data centres, which contribute to greenhouse gas emissions. By deleting unnecessary emails (particularly those with large attachments), we can substantially reduce the energy consumption linked to data storage.
Carbon footprint: Every email we send or receive uses energy to power the servers and the data centres that store and send out those emails. By deleting unwanted emails, we help to limit the amount of stored data in these data storage centres, thus resulting in lower carbon emissions.
Water conservation: By deleting old emails, we can alleviate the pressure on our water resources, as water is required to cool the data storage servers where our emails are stored.
Collective impact: If we deleted as few as ten emails per day, the collective reduction in energy demands on servers could potentially save thousands of tons of CO2 annually.
Further information on how deleting information can support our environment can be found in the links below:
Eco-Friendly Inbox: How Deleting Emails Reduces Your Carbon Footprint – ShunWaste blog
How Do Emails Impact Carbon Footprint? – Algorithmic Solutions blog
The UK government wants you to delete old emails to save water – EcoSend blog
Thank you for reading
Charon