When you think of carbon footprints, most people automatically picture a factory, or a manufacturing unit. One that emits copious amounts of smoke and dust. One that raises the level of air pollution along with the carbon content in the air. Did you ever imagine that something as simple as sending an email can also have a carbon footprint?

Yes, apparently the digital activities that you do also contribute to the carbon footprint. A small email you send out can have about 4gm of CO2 added to the atmosphere. A large email attachment may even add 50gm. Five large emails have a carbon footprint which is the equivalent of burning 120 gm of coal. And guess what? The digital world generates more of a carbon footprint than you would have thought possible.

Receiving a spam email, one that you don’t even open but simply delete, also has a carbon footprint of 0.3 gm. If you decide to conduct a single page web search on a laptop which is fairly energy efficient you are likely to release a carbon footprint of 0.2 gm. If that same web search is conducted on an older model desktop, you are looking at a carbon footprint as high as 4.5 gm.

So the next time you think that just because you are personally not riding a car, or working in a factory, you are not contributing to the carbon content in the atmosphere, think again. As per this science study just about any activity, including wholly digital ones, contribute to the carbon content. There are of course ways to reduce this.