We are planting trees this Black Friday to offset some of the carbon emissions produced by the UK’s email campaigns.

Falling on November 24, 2023, Black Friday is one of the most significant dates in the UK retail calendar. It follows Thanksgiving in the US and traditionally marks the start of the Christmas shopping season.

Despite a decline in UK interest from 61% in 2022 to 44% in 2023, Black Friday is still anticipated to generate £8.4 billion in UK revenue.

While Black Friday boosts sales, many businesses overlook its environmental costs.

Here at EcoSend, we're on a mission to reduce the CO₂ generated through email marketing, and Black Friday couldn't be a better place to start, since this holiday is one of the most wasteful of the entire year.

The Carbon Footprint Of Black Friday

This year's Black Friday is projected to produce 429,000 metric tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions solely from product deliveries, equivalent to the emissions from 435 round-trip flights between London and New York.

Additionally, an estimated 80% of products bought on Black Friday are expected to end up in landfills, be incinerated, or be recycled inadequately. This accounts for the physical impact, without considering the CO₂ generated from digital activities.

Every online activity, including email marketing campaigns, has a climate impact. Research indicates that sending one email can generate up to 26g of CO₂ emissions. As global email sending is predicted to reach 376.4 billion/day in 2025, the emissions issue is escalating.

At EcoSend, our mission is to eliminate the carbon emissions of email marketing by offsetting and reducing the emissions from email campaigns. This Black Friday is no exception. 

Recognizing the environmental damage associated with consumerism, some businesses, including REI, IKEA, Monki, Me+Em, Veja, Lucy & Yak, and Patagonia, choose not to participate.

Switching Up Black Friday For Green Friday

As the world's first climate-conscious email marketing platform, we believe opting out isn't enough; action is necessary. To make a small impact on Black Friday emissions, we've decided to plant 500 trees through our tree-planting partners, Treeapp and Tree-Nation.

If each of the 5.6 million UK businesses, sends just 1000 emails each, this would total 5.6 billion emails. Using our Carbon Calculator it is equivalent to 652.37 million grams of carbon or the distance of driving 1.6 million miles in a car, which would get you to the moon and back 3.3 times.

James Gill, co-founder of EcoSend, states that “Offsetting alone won’t solve the climate emergency. But by raising awareness of the carbon footprint of digital activities this Black Friday, we hope to underscore that everything we do — even browsing online stores and sending emails — has an impact on the climate.” 

Businesses can take steps to reduce their digital carbon footprint beyond Black Friday. Climate-conscious businesses are approaching digital sustainability by investing in web hosting and data centres powered by renewable energy, deleting old data that no longer needs to be stored, improving their web presence and email sending by compressing image attachments, unsubscribing from emails, segmenting email lists, and being more mindful of the emails sent.

These small changes can make a significant impact. Businesses have a responsibility to the environment, and offsetting or lowering emissions is crucial, especially as we approach the UK Net Zero target in 2050. 

Want To Reduce Your Email Carbon Footprint? Switch To EcoSend Today ✉️ 🌳

EcoSend is the world's first climate-conscious email marketing platform. With EcoSend, you'll still get all the tools and features you need to send amazing campaigns. However, EcoSend runs on renewable energy sources and we'll plant trees on behalf of your business.

Sign up for your free trial of EcoSend today to switch to a greener way of doing all things email marketing.

Sources

1 https://www.pwc.co.uk/press-room/press-releases/spending-for-black-friday-anticipated-to-fall-by-almost-a-quarter.html

2 https://www.statista.com/statistics/1422724/uk-black-friday-awareness/

3 https://www.wastemanaged.co.uk/black-friday-waste/

4 https://phys.org/news/2019-11-black-friday.html

5 CO₂ emission estimates based on research from Mike Berners-Lee and his book "How Bad are Bananas?: The Carbon Footprint of Everything", along with further information and research from The Carbon Literacy Project.

6 https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/business-population-estimates-2023/business-population-estimates-for-the-uk-and-regions-2023-statistical-release#:~:text=At%20the%20start%20of%202023%3A,of%20the%20total%20business%20population