Digital Cleanup Day is a global call to action as many places were unable to organize environmental cleanup events in 2020 due to lockdowns. Its aim is to raise awareness about digital pollution and reduce carbon emissions from digital data by cleaning up people’s digital data.
IMU Sustainability Club and Sustainability Office realized a social responsibility project to draw attention to the carbon emissions and environmental footprint of the internet and the systems that support it. On March 16, 2024, Digital Cleanup Day, the project team provided information about the carbon emissions caused by digital activities such as search engine searches, watching videos on the internet, sending sms and e-mails. The information sent to the account sustainable_imu was used to calculate the carbon emissions caused by people’s daily e-mail exchanges throughout the day. In addition, people were also informed about the equivalents of this carbon emission to the use of plastic bags, cardboard cups and cars, and suggested activities they could do to reduce this impact.
Stating that the project has attracted great interest from students and staff as well as the public, the team stated that a person’s internet use causes an average of 414kg of carbon emissions annually and has an impact on climate change. The carbon footprint of the internet and the systems that support it accounts for 3.7% of global carbon emissions. Although digital pollution is not yet an issue that people are aware of, it is estimated that by 2025, the energy needed to store digital data will be equal to 1/5 of all carbon emissions worldwide. Stating that digital cleaning should be done regularly to reduce the environmental pollution caused by digital pollution, the team made suggestions such as deleting applications that are no longer used; unsubscribing from mailing lists that are no longer active; deleting digital data sources such as photos, videos and e-mails that are not needed; removing unnecessary e-mail attachments and information contacts when answering e-mails; using antivirus programs and reviewing message permissions.
