Sustainable Habits: The Impact of Cleaning Digital Spaces

At the end of each year, one of my favorite habits is cleaning out all my digital spaces. This helps me to feel like I am starting fresh, without clutter. Unlike physical spaces where we can see and feel the presence of clutter, digital spaces more often fall into the “out of sight, out of mind” category. As a result, few people think about all the random files that accumulate. Unfortunately, this isn't great for our mental health or the health of the planet.

Mental Health Impact

A study published by Nick Neave, Pam Briggs, Kerry McKellar, and Elizabeth Sillence in 2019 aimed to understand the psychological characteristics of individuals who digitally hoard, which they defined as "a reluctance to get rid of the digital clutter we accumulate through our work and personal lives." Their survey samples revealed that digital hoarding was common (with emails being the most commonly hoarded items). (Source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0747563219300469) The impact of this common digital hoarding is summarized by Susan Albers, PsyD, a psychologist with Cleveland Clinic as, "digital clutter is just as toxic to your mental health as physical clutter. It triggers high levels of stress and anxiety." (Source: https://newsroom.clevelandclinic.org/2024/01/24/clearing-out-digital-clutter)

Environmental Impact

From a sustainability perspective, digital clutter is equally unfortunate. Since cloud storage isn’t actually just in the clouds, but in massive data centers, it means that digital storage has a physical footprint. That physical footprint in turn, has an ecological footprint, most commonly discussed in terms of energy consumption.

US DOE states that Data centers are one of the most energy-intensive building types, currently consuming approximately 2% of total electricity use. (Source: https://www.energy.gov/eere/buildings/data-centers-and-servers) 

(Source: https://iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/6b2fd954-2017-408e-bf08-952fdd62118a/Electricity2024-Analysisandforecastto2026.pdf)

The energy consumption of those data centers has been steadily increasing and is projected to continue. The graph above was taken from the International Energy Agency (IEA) ’s “Electricity 2024” report and shows low-high estimated future energy usage cases. Even in the low case which accounts for energy efficiency gains and technological developments, growth continues. In the high case scenario, total energy consumption doubles in less than 4 years. 

Mark Yeeles with Schneider Electric said in an interview, "Right now, the general consumption of our data and digital habits – social media, email, businesses applications, streaming, gaming, scientific research, and enterprise – combined with the adoption of AI platforms, is compounding global data center growth at a phenomenal rate." (Source: https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/global-data-center-electricity-use-to-double-by-2026-report/)

It is important to note that AI and crypto are the largest driver in the data center energy consumption explosion. However, when demand is expanding so much, every reduction is helpful so, why not clean up your digital space to make a small reduction and give yourself a little peace of mind?

An Example: Myself

At the end of the year, my Google storage usage totaled 64.5 GB. 

As a part of my digital clean, I went through:

• My Drive
• Photos
• Emails
• Misc Backed Up from my Phone

After doing this, my storage utilization dropped to 41.9 GB. Not only that, but I now know where things are if I need them and I know I am not holding onto digital things I don’t need.

A helpful article from Greenly | Certified B Corp allowed me to crunch some numbers on my recent clean-out. They state, “the electricity required to save a gigabyte (GB) of data to the cloud is around 0.0078 kWh per month, totaling to almost 0.1 kWh per year” and that “using the average emissions factor for electricity in the United States, which according to the International Energy Agency (IEA) – was around 0.4419 kgCO2e/kWh in 2021, this would come to 0.04 kgCO2e per year per GB.” (Source: https://greenly.earth/en-us/blog/ecology-news/what-is-the-carbon-footprint-of-data-storage) 

My delta from pre, 64.5 BG, and post cleanse, 41.9 GB, was 22.6 GB. That would mean 2.12 kwh per year saved and an emissions reduction of .904 kgCO2e. I know these numbers may not seem impressive but imagine if everyone in the US did this… Using a population of about 341 million (Source: https://www.census.gov/popclock/), this would equate to a 721,711,341 kilowatt hour reduction.

If we plug that into the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ’s Greenhouse Gas Equivalency Calculator (https://www.epa.gov/energy/greenhouse-gas-equivalencies-calculator) we see:

These figures are for a single year, meaning that savings would continue to multiply for every additional year that passes! All achieved by getting rid of digital things that in most cases, we didn’t even know were still laying around. 

If you are interested, here is a list of digital places you can clean: