Green Hands USA: America Volunteers

I get a lot of email. Dozens, if not hundreds, of messages a day. Sending, receiving and reading those messages takes energy, and even the tiny amount of energy required for an email adds up when you consider the thousands of messages we all get every year. What's a green-thinking computer user to do?

Here's a solution: use Google's free Gmail for your email account. According to a recent article by Bob Gourley over at the OpenWeb Developers Journal, Gmail is probably the greenest email option around because Google has strived for (and achieved) greater data-center energy efficiency than any other technology company.

By using Gmail, you're ensuring that your email comes to you from an efficient source. Some of Google's data centers have a Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) of just 1.11 -- a perfect score would be 1.0 -- making them about twice as efficient as any other data centers out there.

How does that compare to the PUE of other email providers like AOL, Yahoo, Verizon, etc? Well, those numbers don't seem to be readily available, but you can guess that they're nowhere as low as Google's.

The only company that comes close is Microsoft, which means their Hotmail service is the second-most green option in email.

I've been using Gmail for years, and find it easy and effective. Give it a try yourself. You might not see the energy savings in your own pocket, but it will make a difference in the grand scheme of things.