What are virtual emissions?

I did some research and found interesting stats to share with you about virtual emissions. Sending one email produces 4 grams of carbon dioxide per recipient; an email with an attachment can produce 50 grams of CO2. The more people you email (i.e. clicking “reply all”) the more emissions produced, as well. And your emissions from an email will depend on whether you are using a laptop, a tablet, a phone, etc. In comparison, a text message without photos or emojis may produce around 0.014 grams of CO2 per text. This obviously increases when texting in a group chat, sending multiple short texts in rapid-fire mode while on a rant, or sending your friends all the childhood photos you just discovered in your family home. In comparison, sending one 10 gram letter through the physical mail produces around 140 grams of CO2 per letter. That’s 35 times more than a regular email, and 10,000 times more than a regular text!

These numbers may sound small – and they are. An individual text message produces nowhere near the emissions of driving a car, or running a coal-using factory or even sending a letter. So is the virtual world more eco-friendly than the physical one? In many ways yes, but just like plastic water bottles, shopping bags and other individual items, the impact can add up. You know me, I like to show you how individual actions can make larger impact, so let’s scale up our actions.

A German researcher found that using your phone for one hour each day for a year produces 1.4 tonnes of CO2 per person, and there are roughly five billion people in the world using phones. And let’s be real, we use our phone for more than an hour each day, so that’s definitely an understatement of the impacts our phone usage (not considering the manufacturing) create. In a 2011 study, it was estimated that 32,000 tonnes of emissions were created globally from texting alone, which is roughly equal to the weight of 180,000 full-sized blue whales (165 tonnes). That was 2011, when the global population was 800,000 less and we didn’t rely as heavily on technology for our everyday activities. By 2040, researchers from McMaster University estimate that emissions from the Information and Communication Technology (i.e. virtual communications) could account for 14 percent of global emissions – and this was estimated before COVID-19 hit, so the total percentage will likely be much higher now as we rely more and more on virtual communication tools for work and leisure. All of this to say: emissions produced by a single text, email or like may be miniscule, but when considering how much we rely on our devices and the internet to live, work and play, these numbers are concerning. Don’t forget that we are still producing emissions from so many other daily activities. This is just part of our ecological footprint that you may have overlooked before.