With Global warming fears increasing, 'save-the-earth' proponents are rapidly embracing e-mail storage as the 'go-green' option in place of using paper.
I sometimes wonder if this affinity for e-storage really amounts to saving trees and is an environment friendly step. Give it a serious thought and it looks like it is not really true.
Besides the benefit of being able to search for the information we need from these archives of data, they are causing more harm than benefit sitting there in the massive servers of corporates and the free e-mail service providers and your own personal PCs and Macs.
Well lets see how. More than 90% of the data we accumulate and stash away is never used. Think about it. All your e-mails are just lying there from several years. Is there a reason why you should continue to store it when you are sure that you wont need it again ?
Most of the electricity that we use comes from thermal power plants. It requires over a tonne of coal to provide enough electricity for 10 homes a day. Server farms where the data is housed have huge electricity requirements to be able to run the servers adn continue to store the data, run the air conditioners etc. And again these servers are doing nothing much but guarding the trash of e-mails and fies that would never be required by us. Statistics show that to store an MB of data for an year, an lb of coal is required. and all this leads to burning more coal and more greenhouse gases being let into the environment.
As much as we reduce the consumption of paper, one must make an honest effort to clean up all the trash email and just delete them all.
If you truly care for the environment, do it today, do it now.
Clean up those trash emails from your mail box !
I sometimes wonder if this affinity for e-storage really amounts to saving trees and is an environment friendly step. Give it a serious thought and it looks like it is not really true.
Besides the benefit of being able to search for the information we need from these archives of data, they are causing more harm than benefit sitting there in the massive servers of corporates and the free e-mail service providers and your own personal PCs and Macs.
Well lets see how. More than 90% of the data we accumulate and stash away is never used. Think about it. All your e-mails are just lying there from several years. Is there a reason why you should continue to store it when you are sure that you wont need it again ?
Most of the electricity that we use comes from thermal power plants. It requires over a tonne of coal to provide enough electricity for 10 homes a day. Server farms where the data is housed have huge electricity requirements to be able to run the servers adn continue to store the data, run the air conditioners etc. And again these servers are doing nothing much but guarding the trash of e-mails and fies that would never be required by us. Statistics show that to store an MB of data for an year, an lb of coal is required. and all this leads to burning more coal and more greenhouse gases being let into the environment.
As much as we reduce the consumption of paper, one must make an honest effort to clean up all the trash email and just delete them all.
If you truly care for the environment, do it today, do it now.
Clean up those trash emails from your mail box !
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