What’s the carbon footprint of email spam?
By Chris Gaylord | 04.15.09
Dastardly spam! It’s a nuisance, potentially fraudulent, could infect your computer – and has a hefty carbon footprint.
As the world filters out spam from its collective inboxes, and retrieves false positives from email junk bins, it wastes enough energy each year to power 2.4 million American homes and indirectly releases the same amount of greenhouse gas as cars burning two billion gallons of gasoline.
These statistics come from “The Carbon Footprint of Email Spam Report” compiled by eco-consultants ICF and commissioned by computer-security firm McAfee.
A single spam message produces the equivalent of 0.3 grams of CO2, the same as driving three feet in a car. Multiply that by 62 trillion pieces of spam circling the globe each year, and you have the emissions equivalent of driving around the Earth 1.6 million times.
Eighty percent of this energy goes toward individuals cleaning out their inboxes. As they sift through junk mail, their computers and monitors keep sucking up power. Spam filters, on the other hand, only account for 16 percent of the energy total. The report concludes that if everyone used effective email filtering (such as McAfee’s software – nudge, nudge) it could “reduce today’s spam energy by approximately 75 percent…. That’s equivalent to taking 2.3 million cars off the road.”
An even better way to clamp down on wasted power would be cutting off the source. When big-time spammer McColo was shut down last year, the energy saved “equated to taking 2.2 million cars off the road.” And that was only one spam ring.
<< Sixth Sense: A Web you can wear | MainComments
2. Pavan Jagalur | 04.15.09
Embedded in this figure is the assumption that if people were not cleaning out the spam they would not be using their computer. I suspect the computers would be sucking up just as much power regardless of the presence of spam.
The servers delivering the spam, on the other hand, could potentially be draining power.
3. wow gold | 04.15.09
It’s disturbing how seemingly little and unimportant spam could add up to.
Though I still think that this study was done more for marketing McAfee’s products as a green product, the study also provides internet users a better way to quantify their carbon footprint.
I only wish they put more detail into their methodology. It would be good to calculate your personal impact or compare how much energy you consume among other people.
4. Andrew Clinton | 04.15.09
Think how much our time and green house gases wasted while reading such kind of stories….
Keep in mind, Spams are generally ignored…. People don’t click them…
5. Marilyn | 04.16.09
I wonder. I first got this information several months ago - it made the rounds in an e-mail net I’m on, and I’d thought that the ‘facts’ and figures were thoroughly debunked at that time.
I can’t find the debunking info right now, but I’m sure it too will come around again.
Strange that all the papers picked it up this time though, and not last time.
6. Climate changes | 04.16.09
Well an easy way to erase ones carbon footprint is to use the green search engine http://www.treehoo.com that plants trees for most of the profit. It’s Google based and has been chosen as one of the worlds top sustainable innovations by this years Globe Forum in Sweden. Great!
7. Shawn Reeves | 04.16.09
#3 wow, I agree that McAfee published this to greenwash their product, yet, as you see in the rest of my responses, the principles hold true.
#1 Rusty, there are ~5000 feet in a mile; so 30mpg=150000 feet per gallon. 3 feet takes 0.00002 gallons. Does that seem reasonable now? At 37 kWh per gallon, 0.00002 g contains 0.0007 kWh, or, considering power plant losses, 4 seconds of time on a 300W desktop computer/monitor. So anything that takes a few seconds, what it takes to realize that a spam is a spam and to hit the delete key, takes the same as a car takes on average to go 3 feet.
#4 Andrew. People do have to at least delete them, and take the time to see that they are spam, thus the 4 seconds in my paragraph above is justified. At least “such kind of stories” are informative, if shameless plugs for McAfee. It’s too bad that such stories apparently don’t inspire enough skeptical inquiry in its readers.
#2 Pavan, when I am done with my computer, I turn it off. If I didn’t get spam, I’d not have to deal with it, and I’d turn off my computer that much sooner.
#6 is an advertisement. CSM, you should ask such “commenters” to pay you for the space.
8. Jon | 04.17.09
I am a responsible American. I am conscious about waste. I use a tote bag because it is convenient sometimes. When I don’t have my tote, I use a plastic bag. I save that bag, and reuse it.
When I brush my teeth, I keep the water off until I need it. I turn off lights I don’t use. I keep my paper towels to a minimum.
I do those things because I WANT to. I am responsible. I do NOT need some rediculous left wing nut to produce a study in a lab of how much CO2 EMAIL SPAM generates.
I do NOT condone drug use, but maybe these hippie-quack ’scientists’ should go back to their bongs and stop worrying the REAL responsible people with their pseudo-science. If some of these quacks would research a TAD further, they would see that PLANTS NEED CO2 to survive!
Unless you want to SUFFOCATE the plants on our planet, the engine that keeps this planet ALIVE…then reduce your carbon. Shut your lights off and freeze to death.
The planet heals itself. It was built by GOD to do that. It survived BILLIONS of years without us interfering. It suffered and thrived from dinosaur farts. LEAVE THE PLANE ALONE.
If you want to influence politics, be a politician. Otherwise, STOP INTERFERING!
This is JUST ONE MAN’S opinion.
9. mike | 04.18.09
The spam email is still created and sent. What about the enviormental footprint of all this activity?
The story suggested using mcafee to stop the spam. However, mcafee operates on your computer. It simply gathers the spam emails and places them in the email spam box, so you don’t have to.
when you think about it, what is the enviormental footprint of the internet exsisting minute to minute?
Trackbacks/Pingbacks
Leave a Comment
We do not publish all comments, and we do not publish comments immediately. The comments feature is a forum to discuss the ideas in our stories. Constructive debate - even pointed disagreement - is welcome, but personal attacks on other commenters are not, and will not be published.
Tip: Do not write a novel. Keep it short. We will not publish lengthy comments. Come up with your own statements. This is not a place to cut and paste an email you received. If we recognize it as such, we won't post it.
Please do not post any comments that are commercial in nature or that violate copyrights.
Finally, we will not publish any comments that we regard as obscene, defamatory, or intended to incite violence.
1. Rusty Ferguson | 04.15.09
You’ve got to be kidding me. One email email causes enough carbon to move a car three feet? Does anyone believe that? If that’s true we best shut down the Internet NOW!
I hate spam as much as the next person but I don’t get very much, its not hard to avoid spam and it certainly has a much smaller carbon footprint than does the colored ads in newspapers, the billions of junk mail sent around the US and the occasional plastic bag hung on my door. And lets not forget all those versions of yellow colored phone books we find left at out doors!