Digital footprint queries

Hi Alison,

Please see below response from my colleague who has been doing some excellent work around this which is hopefully of use to you:

Though there is no specifics yet on the carbon footprint of Teams messages, we can assume that they have a similar footprint to that of a text message or other instant message which is going to be quite a bit smaller than that of an email. Emails can produce anything from 4g of carbon for 1 - 2 lines to as much as 45g with big attachments, big images and long chains.

The emojis that you can use on the latest version of outlook don't resend the message but instead create a notification which is going to be closer to an instant message. Definitely removing the thread from a response and also reducing the number of recipients to only those who need your response can make a big difference to the carbon footprint of each email. Additionally, making simplified signatures or even turning off signatures on responses is a quick and easy way to reduce your impact.

Internally, we use a little blurb in our email signatures which says that we're trying to reduce our carbon footprint so please accept my thanks in advance for your response.

On the subject of emails, another thing to consider regarding reducing your impact is actually avoiding attachments and instead sending links to SharePoint or OneDrive files. Storing things anywhere is always going to have an impact, however, storing things on your offline desktop and then having to email them to others is more likely to result in duplication of data as people will have a copy in their emails, possibly a copy they've saved themselves etc. Using the more cloud based storage options can help mitigate this by creating collaborative spaces that can be accessed centrally.

To avoid the generation or inclusion of a teams meeting when booking F2F meetings into people's calendars you can use Outlook instead. Either set up the meeting and then delete the teams information from the invite before you send it or set up in your own calendar and forward the invite on, people can then copy it into their own calendars from there (though this option creates an attachment so may be counter-productive).

We have some slides we use to disseminate the message as well if you'd find those useful or would like a follow-up chat please get in touch via scwcsu.netzero@nhs.net

Thank you so much that is really helpful

Hi Alison, Thank you for raising this, it is also an area I am very interested in, and I am looking to undertake a small scale change project for one team around the storage of digital documentation from on-premises server storage to cloud storage and part of this will be trying to measure the impact across the triple bottom line, and will be trying to find data on the carbon impact of storing documents on-premises and in the cloud (including the impact of duplication, management of versions etc).

If yourself or anyone undertakes any improvement work with measurable impact I would be really interested to hear about this - my email is joe.wickens@mpft.nhs.uk.

Maria - thank you for your post too, I'll drop you an email for the slides you mentioned as it would be great to see these.

Hi all, this is very timely as we are also looking at this at Marie Curie currently. Myself and our Green Champions are planning an internal campaign to highlight the carbon footprint of emails and files, and encourage staff to unsubscribe to unwanted emails, reduce the number of emails they send (where possible) and delete unrequired files.
We should be able to provide before and after data on number of emails sent per month and file stored.

Carbon Literacy Project have an article with some footprint data: https://carbonliteracy.com/the-carbon-cost-of-an-email/

And we are working with the Eco Friendly Website Alliance to audit our website and provide recommendations to reduce page sizes. https://ecofriendlyweb.org/

Brilliant, thanks