In the digital world, similar to the environment, there is a tremendous amount of trash. Unnecessary emails, files, apps, and duplicates of photos and videos are all digital waste.
This digital trash creates pollution that consumes energy even when we have forgotten it.
Each year the internet and its supporting systems produce 900 million tons of CO2, which’s more than the annual output of the whole of Germany. The growing concern about the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector’s energy consumption
and CO2 pollution created by wasteful digital practices brought Let’s Do It World to initiate the first global digital cleanup campaign in 2020. Digital
DID YOU KNOW
If 70 million streaming subscribers were to lower the video quality of their streaming services from HD to Standard, there would be a monthly reduction in 3.5 million tons of CO2—the equivalent of eliminating 6% of the total monthly coal consumption in the US. (1)
An employee who participates in 15 hours of online meetings with their camera turned on, creates 9.4 kg CO2 a month. By turning off the video he would save the same amount of emissions that are created by charging a smartphone each night for over 3 years (1151 days). (2)
It takes more energy to mine for BitCoins than the whole of New Zealand consumes in a year. It is important to remember that mining BitCoin produces nothing but a few bytes of encrypted data. It consumes tremendous amounts of energy with computing without actually creating a product or a service of use.(3)
With the energy you use for video streaming (on average 2hrs per day), you could commute up to 3000 km or 2000 miles with an electric scooter a year.That is a transport budget of 8 km or 5 miles per day! (4)
Google uses 15,616 MWh of energy each day, this is more than Hoover Dam produces and it would power a whole country with 1 million inhabitants for a day. (5)
Our limitless consumption of data today needs 3 times more energy than all the solar panels in the world can produce.Our internet craze works mostly on fossil fuels, so clicking, scrolling, and streaming is responsible for more than 870 million tonnes of CO2, adding more force to the deadly global warming trend. (6)
Each day 281 Billion emails whoosh around our planet. Refreshing, reading, and replying to our work emails takes more than 3 hours a day, 5 if you include personal email accounts. It can take more than 23% of our workday, more than 20 weeks a year.Organizing your emails, sending less of them, and using alternative ways of communication, like co-working spaces, would free that time, but also limit the ineffective practice of organizing work through emails. (7)