To tweet is to pollute?

Twitter CEO Elon Musk has the second-most polluting Twitter account of 2022. — AFP Relaxnews

You may not realise it, but tweeting can be a source of pollution. In fact, tweets contribute to the digital carbon footprint, which represents 3.8% of global CO2 emissions, according to the think tank Green IT. Twitter is estimated to emit the CO2 equivalent of nearly 5,000 flights between Paris and New York each year. And, in this regard, celebrities' activity on the social network may not be insignificant.

Greenly, a carbon footprint specialist, has conducted a study on the carbon footprint of Twitter users, as of November 25, 2022. The social network currently has 486 million active users, with an average of 700 followers for each account. For its calculation, Greenly took into account the average number of tweets posted daily (867 million), or about 316 billion tweets per year. Considering that one tweet generates 0.026 g of CO2e, the annual footprint of the social network would amount to 8,200 tonnes of CO2e, or the equivalent of 4,685 flights between Paris and New York.