This article was first published in the May 2025 edition of Business Brief.
Deputy Data Protection Commissioner Rachel Masterton discusses how solutions for reducing email-related emissions work wonderfully with good data governance.
In the October edition of Business Brief, I talked about data retention, with particular focus on storing personal data according to the purpose for which it is used rather than the method of storage.
To recap, deleting inboxes six months after a person leaves your organisation could mean you delete information you continue to need. Retaining information in email inboxes that only one person has access to could prevent others that need it from being able to use it.
These two actions could have adverse impacts on the efficiency and effectiveness of your organisation as well as your compliance with data protection requirements.
This month, into that mix I will add two points about sustainability, in keeping with this month’s theme, starting again with email but this time, its carbon footprint.
In the 2020 re-release of ‘How Bad are Bananas?: The Carbon Footprint of Everything’, Mike Berners-Lee, brother of internet pioneer Sir Tim Berners-Lee, estimates that the carbon cost of an email is between 0.03g and 26g.
This will vary depending on the number of people that receive it, the length of the email itself and the size of the attachment. He estimates that in 2019, email globally accounted for 150 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, approx. 0.3%.
Now, I will admit that that is not a particularly ground-breaking number and that there is merit in email as a business tool. However, while the environmentally conscious are looking for opportunities to make a difference, it is useful to know that suggestions for reducing the total email-related emissions work wonderfully with good data governance practice and general email etiquette.
For example:
- Draft clear, concise emails that contain all relevant information preventing the need for follow up (think data protection principles of minimisation & accuracy).
- Only include people that actually need to receive the email, rather than cc-ing multiple people in to show how productive you are.
- Don’t add a myriad of attachments by linking to content where possible.
- And embrace individuals’ right to refuse direct marketing by keeping mailing lists up-to-date and remove people that are no longer interested.
To coin a well-known UK supermarket, ‘Every Little Helps’, and I’m sure I am not alone in wanting a sleeker, more focused inbox.
But for us at the OPDA, sustainability is not simply limited to the environment, though it is possible to draw a couple of good analogies. For us, it also applies to innovation and business practices designed to last and develop.
It has often been said that data is the new oil, fuelling the development and diversification of the twenty first century economy in much the same way as oil did in the eighteenth century.
And there are aspects of that comparison that are true – data, including data about people, is being used in innovative ways to support and enhance the economy, providing products and services we would not have thought possible only a few years ago and to tackle many of the World’s problems.
Data is, for many, an asset that when put to work well can drive success, sustaining and growing businesses and economies.
But oil is a fossil fuel; used once then gone. And businesses built on data practices that are similarly wasteful do not last long. Think the dot com bubble of the late 1990s. Businesses came amid a whirl of excitement and promise but burnt out and disappeared. People expect and demand better; a sustainable approach to the handling of their data that builds trust and confidence and adds value.
And so, thought leaders, including the President of the Centre for Information Policy Leadership, have re-evaluated the oil analogy and, in this world of sustainability, have instead likened data to sunshine – something that is everywhere and when harnessed well can produce results that endure.
Good data governance, built around accountability and the other data protection principles, can help build this endurance and success. Use the requirements of the data protection law as tools to underpin your business. Put individuals at the heart of your innovation and build solutions they need in which they can have faith and that set you apart from your competitors.
Musician Carrie Underwood said, “successful people have a social responsibility to make the world a better place and not just take from it”.
Use the concept of sustainability to drive improvement, whether it be environmental or societal, and reap the success that it brings.
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Indulge