Company asks: how green are your emails?

A project is underway to measure the carbon footprint of emails to prove their significant environmental advantages compared to other methods of communication.

IT giant Sun Microsystems is behind the research, which they claim can also promote a wider use of electronic communication to further curb carbon emissions.

Richard Barrington, head of sustainability and public policy for Sun Microsystems in the UK, told BusinessGreen: "Email is a great application to try and measure the carbon footprint of, because it is universal and there are billions being sent everyday.

"If email is environmentally better than other types of communication we need to be able to say how much."

Mr Barrington explained how the firm is looking at mail servers, different software applications and network devices when trying to extrapolate the energy used by the mail.

In recent news a new computer desktop mailbox aims to save users 60 per cent on annual percentage compared to Royal Mail.

Documents are sent directly to the PDQit facility where it is printed, folded, put in an envelope and posted.
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