The Cost of Spam: CO2 Emissions
- by Antonio Lupetti
- 42
- July 7, 2010
According to data from a recent study by Commtouch (Internet Threats Trend Report) published in April 2010 and referring to the first quarter of the year, every day we send about 221 billion email messages, of which 183 billion are classified as spam (85% of the total traffic globally).
United States lead the ranking of the “spamming” countries with 38 billion emails per day followed by India (13.7 billion), Russia (9.8), Vietnam (9.7) and Korea (7.6).
How much does all this junk mail cost the environment in terms of CO2 emissions?
Studies have estimated that each email message generates about 0.3 grams of CO2. Multiplying this value by the number of spam messages sent daily worldwide what we get is that every day around 54.900 tons of C02 are released into the environment: a number that translates into around 21 million tons of CO2 every year.
Just a curiosity, for the sake of comparison: the Eyjafjallajökull volcano eruption in April 2010 released into the air around 150,000 tons of CO2 every day.
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I seriously adore the inforgraphics up here.. Who’s creating all of them? They look amazing, and I really mean it.
I also love that this blog isn’t JUST about webdesign.. You’re on the right road, Antonio. ;)
Keep it up,
Miloš
Hi Milos, thanks for your comments! We are experimenting new ways and contents for Woork Up. We don’t want to remain a niche blog.
BTW, I designed this infographic :)
beautiful past, excellent piece of info-graphics! wookups new way of content displaying awesome i have to say. love it and looking forward to see more of these kind.
regards
Thanks a lot! :)
I like it, its a nice post about an issue that we don’t normally think about if ever.
Keep-em coming :)
Great job Anotonio!
Fantastic infographic and really interesting article. Another good reason to stop spam at the source!
Have a great day!
ops… sorry for the typo on your name. i’m incredibly sorry for that!
Fascinating infographic, although I’m highly skeptical of the assumption that every single spam email contributes 0.3g of CO2 emissions.
This data point came from a 2009 McAfee study. According to them, a single spam email contributed as much CO2 as driving 3 feet in a car. This strains credulity.
Even accounting for “human processing time” deleting spam, network resources delivering the spam, and energy consumed in anti-spam activities… Does anybody really buy that the sending of 1,000 spam emails ends up polluting the same as driving a car one km?
Agreed.
Giving a reference for that 0.3g of CO2 emissions would really help.
Will u do just inforgraphics here ? mmm
Great Design but there are more…
Cool post dude.. spectacular info-graphics.
Great Infographics. Keep up your good work!
gud
Awsome post!
i love the graphics!
sweet infographic, i mean it ^_^
more spam=more CO2=bye bye life .. x_x
Nice Post! Impressive!!!
Thanks,
Vicheka
This is an excellent post. I love the graphics..
This is pretty amazing to see people are not only spamming the world with emails but also increasing the co2 emissions, reallycool infographics.
The correct information are in the text and in the graph, but the main comparison (most prominent and of same size) is between tons/day and tons/year. It’s a bit dishonest: the last thing people will remember is that spam produce more CO2 than this volcano eruption.
Moreover, some curious users can be tempted to calculate that the eruption produce 54 750 000 tons/year of CO2. But that’s inaccurate: the eruption don’t persist during of year. Why don’t choose to make a comparison with an other source of continuous CO2 emission ?
Could you please provide a reference for the 0.3 gram per spam message?
Regards,
The volcano reference is odd. You list 150k tons/day, but the figure for spam is in tons/year. It would be much more interesting to have another yearly figure to compare it to.
Thanks for your suggestion André
Wao another one. Great job. dam Spam
what kind of software did you use to create this nice info graphic?! I like it
Photoshop CS2
why would you compare tons/year to tons/day? that doesn’t seem like a math equation that people can do in their heads. you should either extrapolate 20,000,000 tons/year down into to 55,000 tons per day or 150,000 tons/day up into 54,000,000 tons/year. (I see that you mention it in the text, but I think the majority of the people look at the infographic and that’s it) If people can’t make sense out of the comparison/conversion, they’ll just ignore it.
Thanks for your suggestion Jason.
Sweet
Great interesting trivia.
Great info graphic, my compliments to the designer!
Unless we become serious..we can’t stop destruction of mankind…
Why people Spam? I don’t know..
When there will be no earth then meaning of SPAM will vanish totally!
Great info, but could you tell me where do you get these figure? Is it right?
Not to be annoying or anything, but it’s CO2, not C02.
Nice graph though.
Mispelling text fixed!
Thanks! :D
You’ve heard it before, but I’ll say it again.. nice infographics! :-)
Great blog too, keep it up guys, and thanks for your efforts.
Thanks a lot Jon!
Brilliant infographics, brilliant research, sad news though :(
Thanks for sharing
Thanks for sharing…. Is really Indian people send 13.7 billion spam per day….bad :(
Once again excellent work by Antonio. Bravo!!!
Wow ! Amazing. Where did you get it form ? Can you email me with the email provided in the comments thing. Thanks
YOUR WEBSITE IS AWESOME
Grazie per il contributo, siete bravissimissimi!