Cleaning up Emails

Digital Cleanup

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

Step two of our Digital Cleanup is here, and it’s time to declutter your inbox!

Your challenge of the day: Delete 400 emails by 29 June! And if you want to take it the extra mile, we challenge you to delete 800 emails!

The key steps:

  1. Start by deleting old and irrelevant emails (on outlook go to Filterà Date à in descending order)
  2. Delete the heaviest emails (on outlook go to Filter à Size à in descending order)
  3. Delete the messages in your sent items inbox as emails sent also take up space
  4. And don’t forget to empty your spam and trash folders!

While you are at it, observe which newsletters you don’t read anyway, and click the unsubscribe button. You can also optimize your emails by sending less emails and less attachments and using Teams. Moreover, think twice before putting someone in CC and try not to respond ‘Thank you’ to a message.

To understand better the carbon footprint of emailing:

  • 1 email of 1 MB emits 20g of CO2, which is as much as a lamp lit of 60W for 25 minutes.
  • Sending 20 emails a day over one year creates the same CO2 emissions than traveling 1000km by car.

In this short video, find out what is the weight of your email inbox.
Some key resources:

Let’s declutter and make our inbox less CO2 emitting!

Stay tuned for the next email for our second activity.

Annelie, Grant, Papa and Tamara
The Virtual Institute Organizing Committee