[LINK] Greenhouse contribution of letters

[Richard Chirgwin]

Tom,

If I understand your e-mail estimate correctly, there's no allowance for 
the processing consumption out in the network.

OK: that would be really difficult to calculate. We would have to 
produce Y / X, where
Y = typical power consumption devoted to mail server/s, and
X = throughput in Terabytes.

But if we don't somehow estimate the environmental impact of e-mail 
processing, then we can't estimate the cost of e-mail.

The problem (from my point of view) is that it's too easy to 
"externalise" these costs using the argument that "the data centre runs 
whether or not I am using e-mail" - which is something of a cop-out.

Similarly, it's fair to ask that e-mail's environmental impact includes 
a cost of printing - though we don't print every e-mail, an accurate 
estimate would ask "what proportion of e-mails are printed?"

Interestingly, you find even on generous assumptions that an e-mail 
*can* be more carbon-intensive than a physical letter. The question is 
whether a more complete cost model (on both sides) would tip the scales 
one way or the other...merely adopting a "dead trees bad, e-mail good" 
stance is more ideological than it is backed by facts.

Cheers,
RC

Tom Worthington wrote:
> At 06:26 AM 1/04/2008, Stephen Wilson wrote:
>> Has anyone seen any analysis of the contribution to greenhouse of 
>> paper letters ...
>
> The US Postal Service is studying the contribution of letters to CO2 
> emissions <http://www.usps.com/environment/greenhousegas.htm#H5>. But 
> then they claim that advertising mail reduces harmful emissions, by 
> informing consumers and so reducing shopping trips. So I am not sure 
> how credible the research they fund is.
>
> By my own back of the (recycled) envelope calculations, an airmail 
> letter from Canberra to Brisbane produces about 136 g of CO2 
> equivalent and this is one hundred times as much as email.
>
> Here is the calculation, with more at 
> <http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2008/04/greenhouse-gas-from-paper-versus.html>: 
>
>
> A sheet of A4 paper weighs about 5 g 
> <http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/professional/reference/paperweight.php>.
>
> An envelope and stamp will weight about 7 g.
>
> This gives a total of 12 g for a letter.
>
> For a flight of around 2500km, 0.1260 kg per km of CO2 is produced to 
> transport a passenger 
> <http://climate-wise.com/calc/fnpw005/active/content/Emision_calc.htm>.
>
> The standard weight for a passenger is 77 kg 
> <http://www.caa.govt.nz/publicinfo/media-rel-weight_survey.htm>.
>
> So that works out to about 1.64 g of CO2 per km per kg of cargo, or 
> 0.14 g per letter per km.
>
> A letter which went 1,000 km (about the distance from Canberra to 
> Brisbane) would produce about 136 g of CO2 equivalent.
>
>> And what might be the marginal greenhouse improvement of using e-mail 
>> instead?
>
> My estimate is that a 20 kbyte e-mail message (one A4 page equivalent) 
> produces one gram of CO2 per year 
> <http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2007/10/one-gram-per-message-program.html>.
>
> So email would be much better, as long as you did not keep the message 
> online too long.
>
> However, if the letter was only being transported a few tens of km 
> within the same city by road, then the CO2 emissions for the paper 
> letter would drop to under one gram. This would then might be more 
> than an email message kept online a long time.
>
> Obviously it is possible to reduce the impact of long distance paper 
> mail by transporting it most of the way electronically and printing it 
> near its destination. About twenty years ago I helped interface a 
> system at the Department of Education to Australia Posts' system to do 
> this. Setting it up was complex, but it worked reasonably well. This 
> should now be easy to do with standardized Internet based protocols.
>
> Australia Post have a service called eLetter, which seems to be for 
> printing and delivery of mail. Unfortunately Australia Post seems have 
> a very poor quality web site, making it difficult to find out about 
> the service < http://www.eletter.com.au/>.
>
> Also they seem to be concentrating on helping send more junk mail, 
> with services such as Easy Post: <http://www.ausposteasymail.com.au>.
>
> Large mail users, such as the federal government could send 
> correspondence to the nearest capital city electronically for local 
> delivery. Apart from saving greenhouse gases, this would save money. 
> Setting up a system for the whole of the Australia Government would be 
> no harder than the system I helped build for one agency twenty years ago.
>
>
>
> Tom Worthington FACS HLM tom.worthington at tomw.net.au Ph: 0419 496150
> Director, Tomw Communications Pty Ltd ABN: 17 088 714 309
> PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617 http://www.tomw.net.au/
> Adjunct Senior Lecturer, ANU
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