Corresponding footprint
I saw the postal carrier go down the street and, as he so often does, he just kept on going. No detour up our front path. Nothing to deliver to us. Again. Oh well. At least it means no boring white No. 10 business envelopes to deal with.
But it also means nothing to deal with. No unexpected and enticing hand-addressed mail. No intriguing coloured envelopes. No obvious card to be relished in the opening. Mostly, this lack doesn’t bother me, doesn’t weigh on me. But at this time year, when — at least in theory — cards of greeting are flying across the country and around the world, the empty mailbox is rather a drag. A stark reminder that, ahem, I, myself, have not consistently sent out Christmas cards and, so, have no good reason to expect any in return.
Please: This is not a plea for them. This is simply me admitting to myself that I am, this season, quite deliberately giving up even the pretence of sending out cards and, therefore, coming to grips with the logical consequence of an empty seasonal mailbox. And this is ok. It’s right. It’s even good from a carbon-footprint perspective, given that my email inbox has oodles of traffic coming into and out of it.
Or is it good that my email overflows while my paper mailbox sits empty? Turns out, it is better but not entirely neutral.
A little online digging turned up some pretty interesting eco info:
- Plain text emails leave a carbon footprint of about 4 grams of C02e (carbon dioxide equivalent); sending a paper letter via snail mail uses about 1.7 per cent more energy
- Emails with attachments have a larger carbon footprint: the bigger the attachment, the bigger the footprint
- Emails go through cyber networks and those networks are run on electricity
- Once they arrive in our inbox, those we keep are stored in the cloud which is facilitated by data centres, and data centres use a lot energy — electricity, heating and cooling
Tips to ‘green’ your email management include emptying the TRASH and JUNK often; unsubscribing from emails you don’t want or need; thinking twice about CCing people unnecessarily; compressing attachments to reduce the message size; and using a provider that uses a renewable energy source [see Google’s track record here].
Conclusion: OK, so snail mail takes energy and, therefore, leaves a carbon footprint, and so does email. Hmmmm. I think I’ll display last year’s Christmas cards again this year, and send telepathic seasonal greetings to my readers, friends and loved ones. Consider yourself included in that low-carbon well-intentioned message: Happy Holidays!
Land acknowledgement: I respectfully recognize that I live on the original lands of Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation.
Photo by Mikaela Wiedenhoff on Unsplash
Thank you for this weekly post and
ReplyDeleteHappy Holidays to you Amanda !
Merci, Danielle! I hope the holiday season is lovely for you and yours.
DeleteAmanda,
ReplyDeleteYour post rings true to me, too.
So far, I have only received one greeting card in the regular mail. I don't mind that since I also have not sent out any holiday cards this year. But what I HATE is my mailbox is stuffed full each morning with those sale flyers. I have put a "No JUNK MAIL" sign on my mailbox, but the mail carrier ignores it!
And thanks for the statistics about the carbon footprint of emails. I clear out my trash folder everyday and keep my inbox pretty lean. But I do store important files online on the clouds. What do you use to shrink the size of attachments?
Grace: I don't yet have an answer for you, as I haven't yet learned how to shrink or compress files or attachments. I'm a work-in-progress on that front! I'll share with you what I learn, as I learn it.
DeleteOk, thanks Amanda. I sent that JRW commenter who wanted my urban drought research several technical reports in PDF format. Each report was 10-15 MB in size, so those emails had a bigger carbon footprint that I would have wanted! Not even sure if you can compress a PDF any further even if I sent it in a ZIP file.
DeleteBTW I also noticed several FB friends who have decided (for the first time in years) not the write and mail the long "what have we done this year" letter with their holiday cards. Too much pandemic fatigue and who wants to write about lockdowns?
Indeed! Who wants to write about lockdowns and, if someone has been lucky enough to have been able to step out of the COVID-induced routines, do others want to read about that rare good fortune? This second COVID holiday season is really testing the scope of sympathetic joy! I'll keep trying, however, but - truly - just want the NEW YEAR to come!
DeleteI just increased my carbon footprint but not by all that much. See below.
ReplyDeleteThe only snail mail cards I send are the ones containing money -- to my grandchildren. Plus one to Catriona. Because she's a card lover. And because she then writes her grocery list on her Christmas cards all the next year. But no money in hers.
And an e card to you! xo
Thank you, Ann! I like how Catriona (McPherson, mystery writer) uses her Christmas cards through the year; in this house, we re-use envelopes as scrap notepaper for household and grocery lists. And, should a pretty card land in our snail-mail box, I save it for later re-purposing.
DeleteHappy Holidays Amanda and to Val. I haven't sent cards for decades but I have friends who always do and so I have seven so far. It isn't fair, even though I don't send cards I do get a real kick out of receiving them.
ReplyDeleteMadly deleting ancient messages from multiple email accounts suddenly feels responsible! Donna just deleted an entire account. Thanks for that! Love to You!
ReplyDelete