It's just a few days until Digital Cleanup Day and we would like to encourage everyone to take part in this initiative to reduce your data trash heap and save a huge amount of CO2 in the process.
We'll cover more about how deleting your old email helps to reduce global emissions and the other benefits of having a digital spring clean in a minute, but first a little bit of history.
Let’s Do It started in Estonia back in 2008, an action with around 50,000 people cleaning up trash in the streets, forests, and parks of Estonia. Since then, it has grown to be a worldwide initiative involving people in over 180 countries. Time passes and this one event in Estonia has grown into the biggest cleaning action in the world, a global initiative involving people in over 180 countries.
Since 2018, the project has been coordinated by a newly formed Let’s Do It World NGO. This is not anymore just a one-day action, it is much bigger, spreading knowledge and education, with the organisation developing educational programs for sustainable development, giving consultations about the most sustainable resource management systems, and implementing innovative technology for the sustainable world.
People in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are still involved at all levels of this Baltic founded ecological initative; schools, communities, private businesses, NGOs, and governmental institutions.
Digital cleanup…
Cleaning up the waste around us in the landfills, forests, streets, and beaches, is an amazing initiative, but those are not the only kinds of waste that we produce in massive amounts.
It might be less visible but we also create a lot of trash in the digital world Each of us stores a lot of unnecessary files on our computers, tablets, smart phones, and in data centres. This digital trash creates digital pollution that continues to consume energy even when we have forgotten it. Digital trash sits in the backups on servers that provide us with cloud service and continue consuming electricity.
Each year the internet and its supporting systems produce 900 million tons of CO2, which’s more than the annual output of the whole Germany. Some studies estimate that in a decade the internet network will consume 20 percent of the world’s total energy
Just with the simple action of deleting unneeded files, each person can make a positive impact. As well as reducing CO2, we extend the life of our devices, feel more centered and free, and make ourselves more efficient.
Find out more and take part in Digital Cleanup day at the official website here: digital.worldcleanupday.org
