Save Energy By Not Attaching Files To Emails

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Sending files is a pretty standard protocol around corporations. Everyone needs the file, and sometimes it’s great to have that extra copy located in your Inbox. But I just found myself about to attach a file. This file was 13 megabytes. My corporate email box allows me to send about 25 megabytes through my email. I’m not sure if there is a restriction on my total email size the way other online servers do. At my last company, my email was limited to 50 megabytes total for everything. That meant having to purge any emails contained on the server once that limit was hit. At CBS this made sense. Hundreds of emails were sent and servers were getting clogged. But in all honesty I never really thought about a way to reduce my carbon footprint within usual work hours, especially using email.

As I sat there about to attach the file I thought to myself, Poor Server
See, I’m sending one file to someone, the server has to work to process the file, check it for any virus variants that may be attached, which means extra processing. Once the server approves the file, it sends it to the recipient but this file lives and sits on the server just waiting for you or the person that sent to to re-open the file and re-download it. Then the user opens the email and checks the file. Each time this happens Outlook automatically calls to the server, downloads the file. The email and the server it lives on are constantly working. Working for computers means an increased carbon footprint. There isn’t a sleep mode for email. I felt sorry for this file I was about to attach. More importantly I worried about the carbon footprint my work ethics were causing. And thanks to the Sarbanes Oxley file restrictions most corporations use, the emails get tossed anyways. This means I was about to waste energy for no reason- just to say I sent the file.

So to recap, the file you sent, doesn’t live forever.

All these extra rules are run forever for each extra attachment as they wait for emails to start the cycle. Most normal users don’t think about what attaching a file means since they don’t pay the electric bill.

So imagine a computer that spends all day processing 1000 (x) 13mb files uses more energy than a computer that processes 1000 (x) 100kb files.

Also, along with the file most people send, they also have images attached to their signatures. This is like compound interest from credit cards, but instead you are giving this money to the electric company and in my opinion, still burning the environment.

Conserve Bandwith
Instead of sending this 13 megabyte file I decided to take a screenshot of the two pages that were the core changes and point the person to download the file. I’ve removed any type of image attachment to my signatures, though technically I’ve never used them. I also go as far as removing image signature attachments others add to their emails when replying or forwarding. I’m not sure when this became the norm either. Adding images to signatures is one of the worst ideas ever conceived.

I’m not sure how much carbon footprint I saved. But one thing is for sure, I feel like I helped lower mine. Now I just need proof this works.

Regardless, if you read this really try to think about why you are sending that email and if there’s anything that you can do to lower your carbon emailprint.

How To Conserve Email Bandwidth

1. Delete signature attachments
2. Place files on server and send links
3. Remove other people signature attachments
4. Do not download files from emails, instead ask where the virtual copy is located
5. Chuck old emails
6. Limit total emails to 50 megabyes
7. When using Yahoo! Mail, Gmail, Hotmail try to limit file sending.
8. Use services like Facebook or Twitter to propagate information and send links to that service.

— Zeus ::)
Mar 29, 2010