Spring cleaning on your phone and computer too. How do you dispose of your digital waste? / Script

“To put it simply, digital waste can be any file that we create electronically – be it photos, or emails, or newsletters that organizations often create. Also, any correspondence that has been created but is no longer used and not deleted,” said Sprugaine.

Sprugaine explained that everything stored on our smartphone or computer consumes energy. Someone pays for this energy, but all together we pay for it with CO₂ increasing the amount of waste.

“Unfortunately, this is a fact. Every open browser page consumes real energy and creates real CO₂ after disposal. Like every email, like every unopened email that lands in our inbox, it’s not deleted and lives on somewhere,” Sprugaine said.

Undeleted emails or pictures may seem like a small thing to many, but in the context of the world, it all adds up to huge amounts of digital waste.

“Digital waste doesn’t smell, it doesn’t get hands dirty, it doesn’t accumulate in a visible place that could disturb, it doesn’t get thrown on the street either, but it’s there, and it’s a reality that we can’t ignore anymore,” emphasized Sprugaine.

In addition, digital junk on our smart devices often takes up a lot of memory and even slows down the phone or computer, Sprugaine said.

“We can look into smartphones, how many applications are used or not used. If it is not used, then it is digital waste. Also, how many unused social network accounts we have, how many photos. The amount of photos in the world is really huge,” Sprugaine explained.

Cleaning up digital waste from smartphones and other devices is not only good for the planet, but also good for everyone’s safety.

“Once in a while, especially in springtime, during the Great Cleanup, I would recommend going through the huge list of applications that are installed on our in shoes and phones and see which ones we really need. Because there are applications that work in the background even if we don’t actively use them,” advised Ludwig.

It is not uncommon for people’s phones to be home to apps or applications that, for example, are long-defunct Chinese online stores that may still have a payment card activated. Or apps that have had updates for a long time.

“Let’s go to either the Playstore or the Appstore, depending on which operating system the phone has, and see if we need to restore an application. We should look at it purely from a security perspective,” advised Ludwig.

Of course, there are apps that are necessary and useful even if they are not used often, but, for example, once or twice a year. There is no need to delete them, it is more important to think about the digital waste that does not make any contribution.

“We are in no way calling or advocating not to take advantage of technology, but to weigh those clicks. Each click is 0.8 grams of CO₂ – every click. One e-mail contains from 0.3 to 4 grams of CO₂. If you’ve got to write an email, you’ve got to write it, and absolutely take advantage of the digital environment, but think about the emails we receive – we just opt ​​out of those news because a promotional email is 10 grams of CO₂and how often do we open them?” Sprugaine said.

Often, when registering in online stores or other portals, we also subscribe to their advertising e-mails, which arrive from different addresses at the same time or every day, but are relatively rarely opened. This is digital waste, which could not be created if you refused to receive unnecessary news and advertisements.