Digital Cleanup Protects your Business and our Planet

We celebrate Digital Cleanup Day once a year, but responsible organizations do it every day. Digital waste threatens both our safety and our environment. Studies estimate the internet will consume 20 percent of the world’s total energy by 2030.*

Just because there are bigger threats to our planet, does not mean we should not act on this one. Digital cleanup is not only an easy and free way to take climate action, it actually saves you money and benefits your business.

Getting rid of your digital waste reduces risks and saves money

Many ESG activities require investment, digital cleanup is not one of them. Digital cleanup is a rare example of climate action that every organization can easily get started with, and immediately leverage the long list of benefits:

1. Digital cleanup saves money: storing digital waste in the cloud adds up $$$, especially actively securing it. 
   
2. Digital cleanup increases online privacy and safety. Just because you don't need the data does not mean someone else could not use it for harm. By eliminating digital waste, responsible organizations can protect their employees' and customers' data from being exploited. 
3. Digital cleanup increases employee security awareness. It's an opportunity to talk about security risks related to our digital footprints, and support employees in reducing them.
4. Digital cleanup reduces the security risks related to forgotten backups and unused systems. If you are not using something, you are unlikely to be patching it. Unpatched systems are easy prey for attackers.
   
5. Digital cleanup reduces your organization's environmental load.
6. Digital cleanup helps organize clear digital workspaces, which increase efficiency and decrease frustration.
7. Digital Cleanup Day provides an opportunity for fantastic team-building activities with both social and environmental impact. 
8. Digital Cleanup Day is great for your brand. Invite other organizations to join you in digital cleanups to help spread awareness of the issue, and show your employees and customers that you care about the problem of digital pollution.

How can my organization do Digital Cleanup?

Chances are, you are doing many of these things already. The next step is making these things part of your corporate culture, and coming up with quantitative and qualitative measures of your progress that you can report on.  

Share your #cybersocialresponsibility progress and challenge others

Digital Cleanup is an easy and impactful way to make Cyber Social Responsibility part of your ESG efforts and have measurable social and climate impact. Share your story on social media with the hashtag #cybersocialresponsibility so that we, and others passionate about digital ESG, can amplify it. Don't be shy about publishing your metrics and progress. Let your customers and stakeholders know about what you do in order to encourage them and help them choose sustainable service providers.

Let's protect our planet together 🌎

*Andrae, Anders. (2020). Hypotheses for Primary Energy Use, Electricity Use and CΟ2 Emissions of Global Computing and Its Shares of the Total Between 2020 and 2030. WSEAS Transactions on Power Systems. 15. 50-59. 10.37394/232016.2020.15.6.