"Green" question: does anyone know...?

Question

What is the "environmental" cost of sending a piece (say, one sheet, in an envelope) of "snail mail" versus spending electricity to boot a computer and getting online (routers, ISP, ISP's server, emailer's server(s), recipient's server(s), recipient's computer, etc.) of sending an email?

(If no one here knows or may speculate, does anyone know where, e.g., a forum or news article, I may find such information?)

Just curious.

Answer 1

I think it depends on if the mail gets transported by plane, ship, truck or train, since they all have different energy needs. The personal computers at least have multiple uses, not just email, and they are pretty energy efficient if you've bought on ein the last 5 yrs. But Mail trucks alone hava a huge energy demand from gas, they release way more emmisions than a computer does and their manufacturing is also more polluting than that of a computer. Add that onto whatever way the mail got to the post office and it gets worse.

But: I know nothing about servers and the energy costs of that chain.

Answer 2

um, just email it

Answer 3

But to send that mail you use petrol in the postal van Electricity for the sorting machine

etc etc etc

Answer 4

i love the rainforest

Answer 5

haha. thats awsome. never thought about that.. but now imma go check it out.. lol

Answer 6

Intuitively I would think that E-mail is more environmentally friendly.  Consider the amount of coal burnt to power your computer and the other five or so needed to get your message where it's going--I bet you couldn't even measure the amount fuel needed to produce enough power for those six computers.

On the other hand, consider the gas used in just the mail truck that picks up mail from your house.  That alone is a very measurable impact, and that doesn't even include the trucks that take mail to the airport, the planes that fly it across the country/world, etc.

Like I said, though, I'm just speculating here, so I don't have any hard facts to back it up.  But I think it makes sense. :)