{"id":388,"date":"2016-01-22T02:35:21","date_gmt":"2016-01-22T02:35:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/strawberrycode.com\/blog\/?p=388"},"modified":"2016-01-31T17:33:09","modified_gmt":"2016-01-31T17:33:09","slug":"be-an-ecofriendly-geek-and-save-the-planet-delete-your-emails","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/strawberrycode.com\/blog\/be-an-ecofriendly-geek-and-save-the-planet-delete-your-emails\/","title":{"rendered":"Be an ecofriendly geek and save the planet: delete your e-mails!"},"content":{"rendered":"

You want to save the planet? Good! Start by cleaning your inbox! Let’s delete some e-mails, shall we?<\/p>\n

We consume a lot of data every day (e-mails, videos, posts on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, WhatsApp, DropBox, documents saved in the Cloud, …), and all those data are stored on servers. Basically, the more data we save, the more servers we need (and servers consume electricity). Basic math, nothing new under the sun.<\/p>\n

What if I told you that we can all do a little bit of good for this planet, just by clicking on one button? Remember those prehistoric e-mails that you have forgotten about? You know, the spams you received 3 years ago and never opened? Oh, I\u2019m sure you know what I\u2019m talking about\u2026 Well, let\u2019s delete them!<\/p>\n

Let me explain why, and I\u2019ll give you a magic trick right after.<\/p>\n

A study<\/a> shows that storing 1GB of e-mail during one year consumes 32.1 kWh. According to the same study, an e-mail weighs on average 230 kB (that\u2019s 7.4 Wh a year). So, if you delete 30 e-mails you can save 222 Wh, that pretty much the equivalent of a low energy light bulb (9 Wh) left on for a day (216 Wh).<\/p>\n

\"30
30 e-mails equivalent to a lightbulb on for 24 hours<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In other words and on a bigger scale, if every person in France deleted 50 old e-mails, this would be equivalent to switching off 1.6 billion low energy light bulbs for one hour, turning off the Eiffel Tower lights for 24 hours, or even half a day of zero electricity consumption across Paris.
\nSee how little things can add up to big things?<\/p>\n

\"50
50 e-mails equivalent to 24 hours of light for the Eiffel Tower<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Let\u2019s make a difference now!<\/h2>\n

I promised you a magic trick, here it is. If you are using Gmail, try this in the search box:<\/p>\n

is:unread before:2014\/01\/01 category:{social promotions}<\/code><\/p>\n

I chose this filter on purpose, as I\u2019m pretty sure you won\u2019t miss these e-mails, and you wouldn\u2019t have opened them now. Of course, you can get bolder and change the date or category. You can even delete e-mails that you have already read. How courageous!
\nBTW, if you need a hand on advanced search on Gmail, have a look here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Let’s calculate the energy consumption of my e-mails<\/h2>\n

I found 366 e-mails with that filter (it could have been worse!). That makes on average 82 GB or a consumption of 2600 kWh a year. Shame on me!
\nAccording to this study<\/a>,<\/p>\n

“The average unadjusted electricity consumption per household in 2014 was 4,001 kilowatt hours (kWh)”.<\/em><\/div>\n

 
\nSo, my 366 now-deleted e-mails were equivalent to approximately 237 days of electricity, in other words the average consumption per household from January to August. Wow!<\/p>\n

\"My
My deleted e-mails: 366 e-mails equivalent to 237 days of electricity<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Of course, deleting a few emails to free a bit of space on servers feels like emptying the ocean with a spoon, especially when you see the amount of data saved per second (300 hours of videos are uploaded to YouTube every minute). But it won’t hurt anyone to tidy up your mailbox (and don’t hesitate to hit the unsubscribe button on the emails you’re not reading), and if everyone does it, I believe we can all make a huge difference!
\nIt\u2019s your turn now: be an eco-friendly geek and delete your emails! How many emails did you delete? Have you saved the planet today?<\/p>\n

Extra resources:<\/h3>\n

Orange e-cleaning days<\/a>
\nSave the planet, clean your inbox<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You want to save the planet? Good! Start by cleaning your inbox! Let’s delete some e-mails, shall we? We consume a lot of data every day (e-mails, videos, posts on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, WhatsApp, DropBox, documents saved in the Cloud, …), and all those data are stored on servers. Basically, the more data we save, the more servers we need (and servers consume electricity). Basic math, nothing new under the sun. What if I told you that we can all do a little bit of good for this planet, just by clicking on one button? Remember those prehistoric e-mails that … Continue reading Be an ecofriendly geek and save the planet: delete your e-mails!<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":403,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[14],"tags":[78,77,81,80,79],"yoast_head":"\nBe an ecofriendly geek & save the planet: delete your e-mails<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Remember those prehistoric e-mails received 3 years ago that you haven't read? Let's delete them!\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/strawberrycode.com\/blog\/be-an-ecofriendly-geek-and-save-the-planet-delete-your-emails\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Be an ecofriendly geek & save the planet: delete your e-mails\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Remember those prehistoric e-mails received 3 years ago that you haven't read? Let's delete them!\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"http:\/\/strawberrycode.com\/blog\/be-an-ecofriendly-geek-and-save-the-planet-delete-your-emails\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"StrawberryCode\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2016-01-22T02:35:21+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2016-01-31T17:33:09+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/strawberrycode.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/earth.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"200\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"200\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Estimated reading time\">\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"3 minutes\">\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/strawberrycode.com\/blog\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/strawberrycode.com\/blog\/\",\"name\":\"StrawberryCode\",\"description\":\"Fruit for Thought\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":\"https:\/\/strawberrycode.com\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}\",\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\"},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/strawberrycode.com\/blog\/be-an-ecofriendly-geek-and-save-the-planet-delete-your-emails\/#primaryimage\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/strawberrycode.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/earth.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"http:\/\/strawberrycode.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/earth.jpg\",\"width\":200,\"height\":200,\"caption\":\"Planet Earth\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/strawberrycode.com\/blog\/be-an-ecofriendly-geek-and-save-the-planet-delete-your-emails\/#webpage\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/strawberrycode.com\/blog\/be-an-ecofriendly-geek-and-save-the-planet-delete-your-emails\/\",\"name\":\"Be an ecofriendly geek & save the planet: delete your e-mails\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/strawberrycode.com\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/strawberrycode.com\/blog\/be-an-ecofriendly-geek-and-save-the-planet-delete-your-emails\/#primaryimage\"},\"datePublished\":\"2016-01-22T02:35:21+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2016-01-31T17:33:09+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/strawberrycode.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/c328d959959928f47281d7a0ec779e2a\"},\"description\":\"Remember those prehistoric e-mails received 3 years ago that you haven't read? Let's delete them!\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/strawberrycode.com\/blog\/be-an-ecofriendly-geek-and-save-the-planet-delete-your-emails\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"http:\/\/strawberrycode.com\/blog\/be-an-ecofriendly-geek-and-save-the-planet-delete-your-emails\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/strawberrycode.com\/blog\/be-an-ecofriendly-geek-and-save-the-planet-delete-your-emails\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"item\":{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/strawberrycode.com\/blog\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/strawberrycode.com\/blog\/\",\"name\":\"Home\"}},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"item\":{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/strawberrycode.com\/blog\/be-an-ecofriendly-geek-and-save-the-planet-delete-your-emails\/\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/strawberrycode.com\/blog\/be-an-ecofriendly-geek-and-save-the-planet-delete-your-emails\/\",\"name\":\"Be an ecofriendly geek and save the planet: delete your e-mails!\"}}]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/strawberrycode.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/c328d959959928f47281d7a0ec779e2a\",\"name\":\"StrawberryCode\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/strawberrycode.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/strawberrycode.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/strawberrycode.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/strawberrycode.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/strawberrycode.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=388"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"http:\/\/strawberrycode.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":412,"href":"http:\/\/strawberrycode.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388\/revisions\/412"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/strawberrycode.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/strawberrycode.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/strawberrycode.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/strawberrycode.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}