With the conclusion of COP29 a key focus in recent news, businesses will be reminded to step up and do whatever they can to meet the climate challenge.

The importance of being green

Green practices have a significant impact on a company’s environmental footprint, primarily by reducing energy consumption, lowering greenhouse gas emissions, and promoting sustainability throughout its operations. This impacts companies on the compliance and regulatory side as well as their reputation to customers and shareholders.

• Regulatory Compliance: Many regions now require companies to reduce their carbon emissions and adopt more sustainable practices. Green IT practices help companies comply with these regulations and avoid fines.
• Enhanced Reputation: Companies that adopt Green IT can build a reputation as environmentally conscious and socially responsible, which can boost brand value and attract eco-conscious customers and investors.

Identifying overlooked opportunities for Green IT

Obvious practices such as energy use, offices and staff travelling practices will have an impact, but businesses could and should be doing much more.

Large scale data access and storage is often considered important for driving efficiency but is also a key area where companies could significantly improve their green credentials.

Company email accounts and their associated storage offer a huge opportunity for Green IT strategy gains. The energy consumption of company email depends on several factors, including the size and volume of the emails sent, the number of users, the type of email service used, and the infrastructure supporting the service (like data centres, servers, etc.).

What impact does email have on energy use?

The energy used by an individual account or company can vary greatly depending on how many emails are exchanged. A typical employee sends and receives about 100-200 emails per day. If a company has 100 employees, that could mean 10,000 to 20,000 emails per day. This would translate into tens to hundreds of kilowatt-hours per month, depending on the size and type of emails.

• For a small company (e.g., 50 employees), with average email volume and without heavy attachments, email might consume around 10-30 kWh per month.
• For larger organizations, especially those with a high volume of communication and larger files, the energy use could rise significantly, ranging from hundreds to thousands of kilowatt-hours monthly.

Most companies use cloud-based email services like Gmail, Microsoft 365, or their own hosted email systems, which depend on large data centres for storage and processing. Data centres consume vast amounts of energy due to cooling systems and servers running 24/7. Cloud services generally make use of energy-efficient practices and renewable energy, but the overall energy consumption is still significant.

How does Knowledgemill help?

Knowledgemill Mail Manager significantly reduces an organisation’s storage requirement. Powerful algorithms remove duplicates of each and every email ensuring that that each email is securely stored once only. This means that users typically experience a 93% reduction in cloud storage needs and a whopping 85% decrease in costs.

Historic email data can also be migrated from its current location (e.g. Public Folders, Outlook folders, .pst files, etc.) to a central database of choice (e.g. SharePoint, Content Server, File Server, your existing document management system, etc.). Knowledgmill’s automated process will de-duplicate, index and compress historic email data, storing only 1TB for every 15TB of data.

Knowledgemill Mail Manager dramatically reduces the use of cloud or on prem data storage and in doing so, makes your organisation greener.

Conclusion

By embracing Greent IT solutions like Knowledgemill Mail Manager, businesses not only reduce their environmental impact but also gain a competitive edge in an increasingly sustainability-conscious market. Additionally, they contribute meaningfully to global efforts to combat climate change, aligning with international agreements that follow COP29’s outcomes.

Please contact us or request a demo if you would like to learn how Knowledgemill could help reduce your email footprint and transition towards greener company practices.