Just like me before reading articles, watching videos, & have a contemplation on this topic for weeks, emails contributing to global warming would be an illogical statement. It took me a fair amount of time to have a basic understanding of this topic. By writing this post, I do not intend to boast about what I have understood but I intend to advocate this as one of the global concerns. Before doing so, how many mail accounts do you hold  (can be Gmail, Yahoo mail, Hotmail, & so)? How many emails do you send or receive in a day? Out of the total emails you receive in a week, what percent of it is important, & what percent are SPAM mails? 

The emergence of the electronic mail system has greatly made our lives easy just like any other technology. It has also reduced the usage of papers which would otherwise require cutting down trees on large scale to produce papers. But is using the electronic mail system a hundred percent eco-friendly? Many of us have never thought of what it takes to compose, send, receive, read, & store emails on the servers. 

Composing, sending, receiving, & storing mail uses energy (precisely electrical energy). I am not mentioning what amount of energy because this is beyond my knowledge. I recommend my readers to refer to other articles, & watch videos for a deeper understanding of the same. The only thing we can say for sure is that the number of users in the electronic mail system is huge across the globe. No need of doing complicated maths but it can be concluded that the total energy consumption due to activities related to the electronic mail system will be definitely very high. The consumption of electrical energy means the creation of a carbon footprint. A carbon footprint is the total amount of greenhouse gases (including carbon dioxide and methane) that are generated by any activity. This is my basic understanding of the relation between email, & carbon footprints. While it is time to adapt to the new technologies, what are the things that we can do to minimize the possible disadvantages? 

I would suggest following healthy habits of using the e-mail system

1. Compose emails to the point than writing lengthy ones 

2. Make a habit of checking, & deleting spam mail 

3. If you are done with the follow-ups pertaining to a mail that you received, delete it.

4.  Avoid writing short emails like, 'Received the mail", 'Thanks for the mail', & so.