AUSTIN, TX — A carbon-accounting study released Tuesday by the Atlantic Heartland Project found that the average Black Friday promotional email now generates more lifetime greenhouse emissions than the acrylic-blend sweater it is attempting to sell, a finding researchers described as ‘simultaneously alarming, hilarious, and entirely predictable.’
The study tracked the journey of a single ‘EXTRA 30% OFF — TODAY ONLY (REALLY)’ email from a midsize apparel retailer through the AI-personalization stack, the dynamic-image rendering server, the deliverability-scoring engine, the inbox-placement-optimization layer, the spam-filter rebuttal microservice, and finally the 1.4 billion inboxes where it was deleted in under a second.
Total emissions came out to roughly 2.8 kilograms of CO2 per recipient, narrowly edging out the sweater itself, which is manufactured in Bangladesh, shipped via container vessel, and worn approximately 1.7 times before being donated.
‘The email has a worse footprint than the product because the email is sent to everyone, and the product is bought by almost no one,’ explained Reinhardt Volk, a sustainability researcher at the project. ‘It is, in a sense, the purest expression of the modern retail funnel: a planet-warming campaign to move inventory that did not need to be made, to people who did not want it, on behalf of a company that will be acquired by private equity in eighteen months.’
Retailers contacted for comment expressed concern over the findings and pledged to address them by sending a follow-up email apologizing for the carbon impact, which a Mailchimp representative confirmed would itself produce approximately 2.8 kilograms of CO2 per recipient. Several brands have already begun A/B testing subject lines such as ‘We Heard You About Climate (40% Off Fleece Inside).’
The personalization layer is the heaviest single contributor, according to the report, with each email now passing through an average of four large language models that determine whether the recipient should be addressed as ‘Hey,’ ‘Hey there,’ ‘Hey friend,’ or simply by their first name in lowercase. One mid-tier athleisure brand was found to be running a 70-billion-parameter model whose sole job is to decide between the fire emoji and the alarm-clock emoji.
Generational data inside the study was bleak in opposite directions. Shoppers under 30 unsubscribe from promotional emails at a rate of 71 percent, then immediately purchase the same item via a TikTok Shop livestream hosted by a woman in a ring light. Shoppers over 55 click through at a rate of 44 percent, often forwarding the email to a spouse with the message ‘is this a scam.’
Pressed on whether retailers might consider sending fewer emails, Marisol Penn, a vice president of lifecycle marketing at a Chicago-based agency, said the industry was actively exploring solutions, including a proposal to plant one tree for every ten thousand emails sent, provided the trees could also be encouraged to open at a 22 percent rate.
The Atlantic Heartland Project recommended consumers reduce their email-related emissions by unsubscribing, archiving in bulk, or simply ceasing to exist as a marketable demographic, an option the report acknowledged was ‘currently only available to the deceased, and even then inconsistently.’