'Please Consider the Environment Before Printing' Email Signatures Are Hurting the Environment

Do you have unnecessary verbiage in your email signature file? If so, please do something about it.

Sometime around about 5 years ago, I noticed people starting putting this at the end of their emails:

Whoever the first person was who did this clearly lived in a different world than me — a world where lawyers would get emails on their computers and would just keep printing them out and putting them into binders to read later. In that world, I could see why someone would want to speak up. On planet Earth, however, that is not the case. Emails occasionally get printed to get filed in a correspondence file, or they get printed as trial exhibits, but that’s about it. They are only a tiny fraction of the paper lawyers waste. This is the Kony 2012 of the environmental battles — it’s a noble war, but a pointless battle. There are many more righteous green battles to be fought in the environmental war than the faux epidemic of lawyers who refuse to stop printing their emails. Instead the “please consider the environment” email signature is more like one of those “I voted” stickers — both serve no purpose other than proclaiming your self-righteousness for performing a civic duty.

In order for that disclaimer to have served a beneficial purpose to the environment, there had to be a conversation just like this somewhere:

Partner: “I got three more emails. Please print them and put them in the binder with the rest.”

Secretary: “Sir, it says here to please think about the environment. You are killing the Earth.”

Partner: “…”

Partner: “You’re right. Cancel that order. I’ll just read them on this computer box on my desk.”

Even being generous, it’s probably safe to assume that this has happened no more than 8 times in the world in direct response to that email disclaimer. A more likely scenario is that the 99.99998% of lawyers who do not print their emails continue to not print their emails, and the handful who do print their emails will continue to do so and no one will ever know why they do it or be able to stop them.

So now, let’s talk about how that disclaimer is harmful to the internet and the legal profession.

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How That Pointless Disclaimer Actually Harms the Environment

Most people probably don’t realize this, but the internet accounts for a good deal of the pollution in the world. In a 2011 article, which is likely a clear underestimation of 2014 numbers, cleantechnica.com reported that at that time, there were about 500,000 data centers in the world and each used 10 megawatts of energy a month. That’s the same amount a small town uses for each data center. In 2012, Mashable reported that there are approximately 145 billion emails sent a day. Of that number, about 90 billion are business emails.

So, I created a Word doc of just some gibberish to simulate the typical email I get, and saved it to my desktop. Then, I pasted that disclaimer into the file and saved that to my desktop as a different file. I compared the file size of the two, and this is what I got:

That disclaimer creates a .3 kb file size difference. Now, if every business email had that at the bottom, that would be 27,000,000,000 kb a day of data, or 27,000 gb of useless data being added every day to internet storage servers. That would be almost 10 million gigs of data a year of people patting themselves on the back for proclaiming their greenness. This data lives in server rooms where servers are kept on constantly. Only about half of the electricity costs of server data centers go towards running the servers. The other half is keeping the always-on servers cool so that the plastic Ethernet connectors do not overheat.

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I know what you’re saying right now: “Not all 90 billion emails are including that at the bottom, so your estimates are way over.” True, but by that logic, it’s okay if only 10% of the population throws “Do not pollute” 6-pack-ring-shaped flyers into the ocean because it’s not everybody. Or, it’s okay to throw just a few cans out the window onto the highway if you are doing it to proclaim to others that you are against littering. The point is that it is a pointless gesture that, as a whole, does more harm than good.

The Pointless Disclaimer at the End of your Emails about Non-Intended Recipients Also Hastens the Apocalypse

I’m sure you’ve seen it. Here’s one from a big law firm that admires its employees’ gumption (102 words):

NOTICE: The information contained in this email message is intended only for the personal and confidential use of the recipient(s) named above. This message may be an attorney-client communication and/or work product and as such is privileged and confidential. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient or agent responsible for delivering it to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that you have received this document in error and that any review, dissemination, distribution, or copying of this message is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by email, and delete the original message.

Here’s one from another big law firm recently rated on this site as one of the most underrated litigation departments (61 words):

This message and any attached documents contain information from the law firm of XX & XX LLP that may be confidential and/or privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, you may not read, copy, distribute, or use this information. If you have received this transmission in error, please notify the sender immediately by reply email and then delete this message.

Without getting into the merits of the content of the evidentiary advice in these disclaimers (the attorney-client privilege belongs to the client, not the attorney, and it is waived when that person forwards the email to someone else, whether the attorney likes it or not), or the logistics of the advice (“Now that you’ve reached the end, if this email is not intended for you, don’t read/review it to determine whether it is intended for you”), we all see some variation of this multiple times a day. I don’t mean to pick on these firms in particular. These are actually concise versions of the pointless disclaimer. Many other law firms have disclaimers twice that size and argue points like “whatever advice I give you in this email, I wish it to not be considered advice in the event you sue me.” The point is, everyone does it.

These email epilogues take up about 10-20 times more wasted space than the “please stop printing your emails” disclaimer. That’s roughly the environmental equivalent of clubbing 3 baby seals a month.

Of course, don’t forget about how much wasted money all of this email clutter creates in the e-discovery process across the nation. Adding significant amounts of clutter to every email can greatly increase your monthly hosting costs. This email clutter could easily account for several hundred dollars a month in just one mid-sized e-discovery matter. Extrapolate that to every e-discovery hosted matter in the nation where emails are produced.

TL;DR version – Please consider the environment before putting pointless garbage in your emails. Use a bitly link to this article instead.


Jeff Bennion is a solo practitioner from San Diego. When not handling his own cases, he’s consulting lawyers on how to use technology to not be boring in trial or managing e-discovery projects in mass torts/complex litigation cases. If you want to be disappointed in a lack of posts, you can follow him on Twitter or on Facebook. If you have any ideas of things you want him to cover, email Jeff at jeff@trial.technology.

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