A SINGLE email can generate up to 50 grams of carbon emissions - a resident warned councillors.

June Tranmer said people should "think twice before we send an email" because even short messages have a carbon footprint.

She told City of York Council's climate change committee that an email "with long and tiresome attachments" can produce 50g of carbon, according to research by charity The Carbon Literacy Project.

Ms Tranmer said: "It's not just about our own electricity that we're using for our gadgets and our machines, it's about the storage, the servers, the whole cloud.

"I think we all need to raise awareness of this and think twice before we send an email.

"It's not just think twice before we print it, it's think twice before we even send it.

"So many people just send 'yes', 'thank you' or emojis."

She added: "Our gadgets are constantly being recharged and using loads of energy all the time and I do really feel a bit guilty about that."

If each adult in the UK sent one fewer email a day, it would save more than 16,433 tonnes of carbon emissions a year - equivalent to 81,1522 flights to Madrid or taking 3,3343 diesel cars off the road - according to a study by OVO Energy.

Ms Tranmer told the meeting that the average spam email generates 0.3g of CO2 and a standard message creates 4g.

The Carbon Literacy Project advises people to reduce the size of their emails by lowering the resolution of images, avoiding large HTML elements and attachments and link to files rather than sending them by email.