Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Day 155 of our Green Year: Green E-mail


Due to our work, we often have to work through e-mail to communicate with our clients regarding the books they are having us write. However, even though e-mail does not use paper, it does contribute to greenhouse gases due to the large amount of CO2 that is generated from e-mail servers' need for power and air conditioning.

So, we want to go green with our e-mail and the best way that can be done is to use a green webmail provider. One of the best webmail providers that is environmentally-minded is Care2.com, which has been providing webmail since 1998. You can choose from a variety of e-mail addresses that reflect your environmental choices. Care2.com is free, reliable, has spam and virus filters, spell-check, address book import and five gigabytes of storage space. Why is Care2.com green? Well, for every e-mail you send, Care2.com will donate to environmental causes.

Community Mail is another one that provides you with the ability to share your values in your e-mail address. As well, Community Mail is powered by green energy and completely free.

Once you have chosen one of those green providers, you can go a bit greener by putting a green signature on your e-mails. It can be simple like "Save a tree, Don't print this e-mail." It is a simple message and it may just save a few papers from being used needlessly.

Layla and I will be away for the next few days, so we will not be able to publish comments until we are back online. When we return, our e-mail addresses will have also changed to use Care2.com as our e-mail provider for this blog.