Did you know? According to Ökotest , sending a normal email without an attachment generates about ten grams of CO2 . That's roughly equivalent to the carbon footprint of a plastic bag. Emails with an attachment (1 MB) cause twice as many emissions.
The sheer volume of emails we send daily and that land in our inboxes requires enormous data centers worldwide. These consume a great deal of energy for operation and cooling. To keep energy consumption as low as possible, you should send email attachments in Outlook as links instead of files. This is significantly more energy-efficient and saves a lot of storage space – for both the sender and the recipient. If it is necessary to send an attachment as a file, you should compress the data for more energy-efficient transmission.
Sending files as links is easy: In Outlook, click "Attach File" as usual, then select your online storage location under "Browse Web Locations" and choose the desired documents. Outlook will ask you whether you want to attach the file or send it as a link. You can also send already attached local files as links. To do this, click the arrow icon in the attachment and select "Upload."
More tips for environmentally friendly email communication
- Do not keep old, no longer needed emails in your inbox, but delete them regularly.
- Permanently delete spam and unwanted emails directly (Shift and Delete)
- Empty the wastebasket regularly
- Set up a spam filter
- Unsubscribe from newsletters you no longer need
- Turn off automatic notifications from other websites
- Summarize information in a single email whenever possible to reduce the number of emails sent.
- A short phone call instead of many emails sent back and forth saves time and energy.
- Do not send unnecessary pictures and videos.
- Compress any files required as attachments before sending.
Your contact person at Arqum: Christian Heinrichs