| Activity | CO₂e produced | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Boiling a full kettle ~60–100 times | ~50–70 g each | 3 000–5 000 g = ~70 kettles |
| Driving a petrol car ~15–25 miles | ~0.2–0.3 kg CO₂e per mile | UK average car |
| 1–2 roast dinners | ~2–3 kg each | Meat-heavy meal (esp. lamb/beef) |
| One hour of flight | ~5 kg CO₂e | Economy seat, short haul |
| A cheeseburger | ~3.5 kg CO₂e | Beef and dairy-heavy item |
| One pair of jeans (with caveats) | ~33 kg CO₂e | So ~1/10 of a pair |
| Streaming Netflix for ~20–30 hours | ~0.1–0.2 kg CO₂e/hr | Depends on network & device efficiency |
An entire year’s worth of email sending (40~ text emails a day, modest attachments) creates:
❄️ Less than one hour of flying
☕ About 70 boiled kettles
🚗 One short car trip
🍔 One cheeseburger
📺 A few weekends of Netflix
It depends.
- Digital activity is often seen as “clean” – it’s not.
- Multiplying tiny actions across millions of users adds up.
- It’s a great gateway into sustainable digital habits.
- Compared to transport, heating, food, and fashion, it’s negligible.
- Deleting emails or quitting email signatures won’t solve the climate crisis.
| Category | Typical UK annual CO₂e | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Heating your home | ~2 000–4 000 kg | Biggest share for most |
| Driving regularly | ~1 500–3 000 kg | Higher for commuters |
| Flying one return flight (e.g. UK–USA) | ~1 000–2 000 kg | Huge per-passenger impact |
| Meat-heavy diet | ~1 500–2 500 kg | Lower with plant-rich diets |
| Emailing all year | ~3–5 kg | Rounding error! |
Your entire annual email carbon footprint ≈ 0.01–0.02 % of the average UK citizen’s total footprint (~7–10 tonnes CO₂e/year).
So:
💌 Don’t stress about email emissions – act on them if it’s easy, but focus your energy on heating, travel, food, and consumption for real impact.
Is one pair jean really 33 kg?
Short answer – yes, but with caveats.
The figure of ≈ 33 kg CO₂e for one pair of jeans comes from Levi Strauss & Co.’s cradle-to-grave life-cycle assessment of a pair of Levi’s 501s. It is credible, yet it sits toward the top of the range because it includes four years of tumble-drying and ironing. Independent studies usually land between 10 kg and 30 kg CO₂e, while the manufacturing only portion is closer to 15–20 kg.
| Life-cycle stage | kg CO₂e | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Cotton growing & ginning | 2.9 | 9 % |
| Spinning, dyeing & weaving | 9.0 | 27 % |
| Cut, sew, finish | 2.6 | 8 % |
| Sundries & packaging | 1.7 | 5 % |
| Transport & retail | 3.8 | 11 % |
| Consumer care (washing, tumble-drying, ironing over ~4 years) | 12.5 | 37 % |
| End-of-life | 0.9 | 3 % |
| Total | 33.4 kg CO₂e | 100 % |
Cradle-to-gate (everything up to the shop door) is 16.2 kg CO₂e; adding consumer use roughly doubles the footprint. (Levi Strauss & Co) (Oxfam GB)
- A survey of published LCAs finds 10–30 kg CO₂e per pair, with ~20 kg as a common mid-point. (Arbor)
- Fast-fashion jeans made from lower-quality cotton but laundered very little can be lower, whereas premium or synthetically-blended denim, air-freighted and heavily machine-dried, can be higher (some specialist LCAs report up to 90 kg CO₂e). (ScienceDirect)
- Cotton cultivation – fertiliser, irrigation and field emissions differ by region.
- Electricity mix – mills running on coal-heavy grids raise energy emissions.
- Consumer habits – washing every wear with a tumble-dryer versus washing monthly and line-drying can swing lifetime impact by more than 50 %.
- Garment lifetime – wearing jeans for four years instead of two halves the annualised footprint.
- ≈ 160–190 miles in a typical UK family petrol car (at ~175 g CO₂ mile⁻¹).
- ≈ one-third of a short-haul flight (London → Amsterdam economy seat).
- ≈ seven to ten times your entire year of email sending (3–5 kg CO₂e).
- ≈ 500 boils of a full electric kettle.
| Action | Potential saving |
|---|---|
| Buy fewer, wear longer – doubling lifetime halves annual impact | 50 % ↓ |
| Wash less & line-dry – cold wash, no tumble-dryer | 30–40 % ↓ |
| Choose certified Better/Organic cotton | 10–15 % ↓ |
| Buy second-hand – skips manufacturing altogether | ≥ 50 % ↓ |
The headline 33 kg figure is real, but it represents a full, energy-intensive lifetime scenario. If you focus only on the point of purchase, manufacturing a pair of jeans costs roughly 16–20 kg CO₂e; total impact then depends hugely on how you look after them.