Joined the #DeclutterWithYahoo movement? Here’s how your efforts helped us plant 200 trees!
The world today revolves around the Internet, and our lives have all been made so much more convenient by it. However, many of us might be unaware about the carbon footprint we leave behind each time we take our activities online.
Did you know that carbon emissions from the use of the internet and its supporting systems now exceed even that of the airline industry? Just internet data alone makes up 2% of global CO2 emissions and a typical business user’s email habits create 135kg of CO2 emissions annually - the equivalent of driving 321km in a car!
The internet is a shared space with billions of users, including yourself. We all have a part to play in ensuring its sustainability. How? By streamlining your digital usage and online habits, which not only reduces your carbon footprint, it also keeps your online life and activities more organised.
At Yahoo, we help connect people to their passions through new possibilities — and with this comes the realisation that we only have one world we call home, and we want to ensure that our future generations will be able to experience and enjoy more of this planet we live in.
This April, we invited everyone to stand in solidarity with the #DeclutterWithYahoo campaign for Earth Day to help raise awareness and take action against climate change. Were you one of those who pledged to declutter your emails for #YahooEarthDay or showed your support by commenting, liking, and sharing our posts?
Your meaningful participation has helped to shine a spotlight on the simple yet powerful ways on how everyone can contribute. Together, we raised awareness to more than 4 million online users through our campaign page and social media channels — that’s a lot of people who learned how their online activities can impact the environment! With your full support, Yahoo has planted 200 trees in the Yahoo Forest.
How will our 200 new trees in the Yahoo Forest make an impact?
Treedom, our initiative partner, is the world’s first platform that allows you to plant a tree from across the world and follow the story of the tree-planting project online. Since its foundation in 2010 in Florence, more than 3 million trees have been planted in Africa, South America, Asia, and Italy.
Thanks to the encouragement from all who participated across Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines! Yahoo has planted 200 trees for the Yahoo Forest, which houses an interesting variety of tree species such as white mangrove, coffee, inga, and more! Contest winners of the #DeclutterWithYahoo campaign have also chosen to plant lemon and cacao trees in the Yahoo Forest!
These trees will contribute to absorbing close to 26.63 tonnes of CO2 (equivalent to 26,630 kg!) from the atmosphere in the first decade of the trees’ lives — and hopefully for a long time to come!
Most original and creative ways to declutter
We are overwhelmed by your support on social media in helping to spread awareness on how we can make the world a more sustainable place. Our efforts do not end here, and neither should yours! By decluttering your emails and other online activities regularly, you can easily and actively make your digital habits more sustainable and continue playing your part in reducing harmful carbon emissions.
Start off by changing your email habits, unsubscribing from unwanted email subscriptions, or even compressing the sizes of your email attachments — such emails produce around 50g of CO2 each time they are sent! Yahoo Mail’s ‘Unsubscribe’ and ‘Attachment’ tabs make these actions much easier.
There are other ways your proactiveness can conserve the environment – some of you thought of even more original ideas to inspire and encourage digital decluttering. Here are some tips that you shared about regulating digital usage:
Periodically vet through subscription email list and unsubscribe from those that are no longer relevant
Categorise emails according to priorities so that it is easier to identify unwanted emails to clear away
Delete unused app icons or downloaded files from the computer or mobile phone regularly
Thank you for doing your part in building the Yahoo Forest and contributing to a greener planet. You may follow the trees’ journey from nursery to the ground at the Yahoo Forest page here. Here’s to inspiring more people to join the journey in paving the way for a more sustainable future!
