Taking place on Saturday 15 March, Digital Cleanup Day is a day dedicated to raising awareness about digital pollution and encouraging individuals and companies to declutter and restructure their online presence.
In 2007, one zettabyte of data was created worldwide. In 2035, we will create more than 2,000 zettabytes. To contextualise this, you would need the paper from 20 trillion trees to print out one zettabyte of data. There are only about 3.5 trillion trees left on the planet. 90% of all data is never accessed 3 months after it is stored.
Getting rid of digital clutter not only helps to reduce CO2 emissions but also prolongs the lifespan of your devices.
Here are some quick and easy things you can do to reduce your digital clutter.
- Remove applications from your phone that you have not used for a while or used only a few times. They consume energy even when they are not in use and can consume hundreds of megabytes during monthly updates.
- Review your photos and videos, deleting duplicates and blurry ones. By deleting the unnecessary ones, plus any duplicates, you can free up tens of gigabytes of valuable storage space on your device
- Delete files that are duplicates, or that you no longer need. Don’t forget to check your downloads folder.
- Clear your computer’s recycle bin to free up space on your hard drive.
- Organise your bookmarks/favourites on your browser into folders and delete those you no longer need.
- Filter emails by the oldest one and archive them, archiving emails doesn't delete them, they are just moved to a separate database so you will still be able to access them.
- Unsubscribe from newsletters you don’t read.
- Stop sending 'thank you' emails, one email emits, on average, 4g of CO2 = the carbon footprint of a light bulb turned on for 6 minutes!
For more information and tips, visit the Digital Cleanup Day website