Digital Response joins Email Expiration Date initiative

A few months ago Digital Response joined the initiative Email Expiration DateThe aim of this project is to reduce the carbon footprint generated by the emails we send and which are stored in data centres, consuming a large amount of energy. How? We'll tell you about it below.

The context

Radicati says that around 300 billion emails are sent daily and a significant portion of these become obsolete within days of being received by recipients, taking up space in data centres and consuming energy for storage.

Very few users take the time to scrutinise their email and delete emails that are no longer needed, a fact that leads to a large carbon footprint.

The idea

The initiative of Email Expiration Date aims to try to reduce the carbon footprint of these emails. They believe that it is vitally important to delete them quickly when they are no longer needed. Their proposal focuses on the senders themselves indicating when their emails become obsolete and therefore have an expiry date. In this way, no such responsibility is given to the recipients.

How it works

But how would it work in practice? As mentioned above, at the time of sending, the sender will define when their message will become obsolete and ESP will be responsible for transmitting the information to the recipient's mailbox. The messaging solution would offer users a mechanism to automatically delete these emails, once the recipient has given their consent.

The success of this initiative requires the participation of the entire email delivery chain: senders, ESPs and ISPs/webmails.

It should be noted that the authors of this proposal believe that the real challenge is the adoption of all actors to make this idea a reality and not so much the technical solution which is currently not fully defined.

Digital Response encourages you to find out more about this initiative and, if you think it brings real value, join in! Here you can find all the information.