The negative CO₂-Balance

We challanged the math and selected by random about 1000 messages in a classic business mailbox in the year 2019. These messages arrived our agency from different people, companies, stakeholders, potential employees and advertisers as well as business-partners. The size of data and diskspace which is used by useless email disclaimers, is incredible! The amount of data that is uselessly produced through the use of mostly multilingual e-mail disclaimers and therefore also has to be transmitted - whereby every bit of data transmission ultimately also requires electrical power and thus has a corresponding impact on the CO2 balance - is unbelievable high. In addition, many companies not only attach these legally worthless disclaimers to normal e-mails, but even in autoreplys. In other words, an autoreponder that informs you that the person you are writing to is on vacation in 2 sentences, and underneath there is an email disclaimer with worthless text. Mind you, 2 - 3 paragraphs, mostly first in German and then - oh, we have such an international touch - in English indicate that this mail could be confidential and that you may not be the intended recipient and that you are therefore the sender has to inform.

Percentage of useless junk data in emails

We took a closer look: The proportion of useless data garbage in e-mails amounts to a whopping 58% according to our random measurement for 1000 e-mails in 2019. 58% of the transmitted texts in e-mails are on average useless data garbage. (Attachments were not taken into account for the calculation, but the spam was not taken into account either.) Use disclaimer. All in all, 58% of garbage remains. Of course, this focus shifts upwards if "Yes, please do so. Greetings!" the actual text in the email is and then the two magic paragraphs follow. This results in emails whose garbage content increases to 89%.

Environmental protection means deleting disclaimers!

Help to protect the environment also in the digital world, apart from the fact that you should never print out e-mails anyway, it would be advisable to simply delete e-mail disclaimers from your own mail program or to have them deleted by the administrators in your company. Because the garbage data is not only transferred, it is also stored in at least two places, in your outbox and in the inbox of the recipient of your email. So improve your use of resources in terms of energy and material consumption and remove email disclaimers from your messages. And it's best to make other people aware that email disclaimers shouldn't be used.

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Isn't the email disclaimer necessary?

No, you don't have to attach such nonsensical text to your messages. It is completely useless and has no legal application. There are two simple reasons that even a non-lawyer understands:

• If you as the sender have no relationship with the recipient (for example, because they are unknown) and there is no contractual basis, then this contract does not arise from your unilateral explanation of how the recipient should behave.
• If you have a business relationship with the recipient, for example, then the basic contractual conditions that have long been agreed also apply, which include the subject of confidentiality, the protection of business secrets, etc.

Basically: A contract that was only sent from one side is invalid. But that you have a certain confidentiality, that you have personal rights worth protecting and that these are to be upheld and not violated, that applies anyway. Because it's in the law. So instead of the email disclaimer, you could also write:

Disclaimer: Applicable laws apply..

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