How sending e-mails compares with carbon emissions of car use

In a commentary, SMU Professor of Organisation Behaviour and Human Resources Thomas Menkhoff, who is also Academic Director of SMU's Master of Science in Innovation Programme, opined that digital natives can reduce their carbon footprint by being conscious about Internet usage. According to estimates published in Phys.org, sending a short e-mail adds about 4g of CO2 equivalent (gCO2e) to the atmosphere while an e-mail with a long attachment has a tenfold carbon footprint, that is 50 gCO2e. An interesting challenge for educators is to create buy-in for the concept of digital sustainability among a generation of digital natives who contribute quite significantly to the problem of "Internet pollution".