The internet may not be a physical place, but it does occupy an incredible amount of space in the world. In a 2011 article, cleantechnica.com reported that at that time, there were about 500,000 data centers in the world, and each used 10 megawatts of energy a month. In 2012, Mashable reported that there are approximately 145 billion emails sent a day. Of that number, about 90 billion are business emails. [2]
Disclaimers like these:
NOTICE: The information contained in this email message is intended only for the personal and confidential use of the recipient(s) named above. This message may be an attorney-client communication and/or work product and as such is privileged and confidential. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient or agent responsible for delivering it to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that you have received this document in error and that any review, dissemination, distribution, or copying of this message is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by email, and delete the original message.
are hidden contributors to pollution.
That disclaimer creates a .3 kb file size difference and if every business email had that at the bottom, that would be 27,000,000,000 kb a day of data, or 27,000 GB of useless data being added every day to internet storage servers. This data lives in server rooms where servers are kept constantly running; about half of the electricity costs of server data centers go towards running the servers, while the other half is keeping the always-on servers cool so that the plastic Ethernet cables don't overheat. [2]
These email epilogues take up about 10-20 times more wasted space than the “please stop printing your emails” disclaimer. [1] Adding significant amounts of clutter to every email can greatly increase your monthly hosting costs. This email clutter could easily account for several hundred dollars a month in just one mid-sized e-discovery matter. Extrapolate that to every e-discovery hosted matter in the nation where emails are produced. [2]
Contexts
- 1] [Think Before Printing, thinkbeforeprinting.org
- 2] ['Think Before Printing’ Email Signatures Are Hurting the Environment, abovethelaw.com
- 🏷️#what-is-mythos (See: 📝MythOS)