According to the Guardian, email has just one-60th the carbon footprint of a standard letter.
"Although 78 per cent of incoming emails sent are spam, these messages account for just 22 per cent of the total footprint of a typical email account because, although they are a pain, you deal with them quickly," the news provider claimed.
It added: "A genuine email has a bigger carbon footprint, simply because it takes time to deal with."
However, the paper claims that the ease of use of email, and the fact that email marketing campaigns can be delivered to thousands of people's inboxes simultaneously means that the platform may not actually result in a CO2 saving.
And, an increase in the carbon footprint of email marketing is almost a certainty as businesses ramp up their spending on the medium, according to new research from Eloqua.
