Digital Cleanup Day (DCD) is a day dedicated to cleaning up our digital lives, just like we clean up our physical environment on World Cleanup Day (WCD). This year’s digital campaign officially took place on Saturday 16 March, although registration of results remained open until May to allow business organisations to complete their CSR- & ESG-related activities in connection with DCD.
The results from 2024’s campaign have pushed overall registration past the 1 million mark, underlining the trend of increasing interest in the campaigns’ related activities.
Now having engaged 1,184,717 participants, DCD’s five annual campaigns have seen over 14.5 million gigabytes of data deleted from digital devices in 175 countries and territories worldwide (including 83% of all UN member states).
This remarkable achievement has also prevented the production of over 3,625 tons* of CO2, which would otherwise have been expelled into our increasingly fragile environment.
2024’s results saw 315,097 registrations, from 98 countries and territories, deleting a total of 1,829,132 GB of data, thus preventing the production of 457,283 kgs of CO2.
The majority of registrations came from France, once again, with Belgium, Bulgaria, Italy, and the UK completing the Top 5 by participation. Brazil topped South America, Pakistan led the chart in Asia, and Tanzania saw most participation in Africa.
In terms of the amount of data deleted, France also topped that list, with Brazil, Slovenia, Switzerland, and the UK completing this Top 5, the majority of data deleted split between them.
DCD, organised by the Let's Do It World NGO (LDIW), is a global initiative, and is now into its sixth year. The primary aim is to raise awareness about digital pollution, thus encouraging individuals and companies to declutter and restructure their online presence. Its importance and relevance increase with each passing year.
Commenting on the significance of DCD campaign results, and on the need to have DCD in our consciousness, LDIW’s CEO, Anett Linno, remarked, “At LDIW we are witnessing increasing interest in Digital Cleanup Day, for example from schools, business organisations, government representatives. More people than ever care about this topic and are proactively approaching us to know more about Digital Cleanup Day and how to organise it in their teams or communities.”
She explained, “Keeping our digital data footprint small by cleaning up and deleting all unnecessary and non-essential pictures, videos, movies, emails, etc., from all our devices, as well as from the cloud, is a relatively small act that each of us can do for our planet, just as we clean up waste from nature. It can be simply done, and even made fun, especially when doing it together with your family, friends or colleagues.”
“This is the positive effect of the efforts that our network is undertaking in this direction, by communicating and spreading the word about Digital Cleanup Day as a solution for the digital waste issue,” concluded Linno.
This is the ‘information era’ and we live in a dualistic world: we have the physical and the digital ones. We human beings are producing and consuming goods and services in both. This also means that, when using online products and services, such as watching Film & TV streaming channels, or posting/emailing pictures from our travels, we also create waste in both worlds.
Digital waste consumes simply enormous amounts of energy, which in turn creates a massive impact in terms of CO2 production. The Internet alone produces more than 900 million tons of CO2 each year! The need for energy production to literally fuel the Internet has therefore increased and still does so – rapidly.
So, we thank each and every person who participated in this year’s campaign. We are grateful for your ongoing commitment to improving the health of our planet’s ecosystem.
We also extend very warm gratitude to our prolific blog author, Iryna Komazova, who produced an excellent series of informative articles on the topic of digital waste, the most recent of which you can read here.
We also thank our social media representative, Danish science influencer Maria Jarjis, for her series of entertaining and vibrant educational videos, the most recent of which you can view on our official Facebook channel.
You can find out much more about how Digital Cleanup Day’s activities contribute to educating the population of the vital need to address digital waste on the dedicated website, which also features a comprehensive Learning Centre.
You can also follow our official LinkedIn channel, which will bring news and views as the DCD campaigns continue.
We look forward to receiving your registrations – and your stories! – for next year’s campaign, scheduled for Saturday 15 March, 2025.
Footnote: * For the calculations of digital waste, we use the world average CO2 emission figures of the International Energy Agency, according to which 4 GB of data stored on servers and other data storages for one year consumes 2 kWh of energy and produces 1 kg of CO2.
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