by Marisa Taylor, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
Email users may already hate spam, but perhaps they’ll be gratified to know that it’s also bad for the environment.
Calculating one’s carbon footprint may be all the rage, but in the case of spam, it’s serious, according to a study released Wednesday by computer security company McAfee Avert Labs.
by Geoffrey A. Fowler, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
E-commerce reduces the environmental impact of shopping by using about a third less energy than traditional retail–but only if you skip the express airmail.
A study out Tuesday by the Carnegie Mellon Green Design Institute offers a scientifically rigorous estimate of e-commerce’s green benefits. E-commerce not only uses less energy, but its carbon footprint is also a third smaller than bricks-and-mortar retail, the scientists found.
Companies are increasingly being asked to calculate their carbon footprint, and if they’re public, publish it. Good idea? Perhaps. But it’s harder than you might think, and the results can sometimes be counterintuitive. Take my own industry, magazine publishing. Surely dead-tree media is bad for the climate, and Web media is good, right? Well, not necessarily.
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