About Digital Waste
Let's reduce
Carbon Footprint | Digital Waste | Water Use | E-Waste |
Electricity Use
19,000 GWh
Per year, equivalent to the entire annual output of the UK's solar power sector
Water Use
26 million litres
Per year for small data centres
Global Carbon Footprint
805,083 tonnes
Produced annually, from unused or underutilised digital files
E-Waste
62 million tonnes
Produced globally in 2022, an 82% increase from 2010
The
£3.7 Billion
Problem
An invisible crisis
Digital waste is costly—draining money, energy, carbon, and increasing risk—yet it often goes unnoticed until it causes failures or compliance issues. Though widely ignored, we must address it, because it’s not just an IT problem but a hidden cost, a security threat, and a rising environmental concern on par with other sustainability challenges, is already costing the private sector £3.7 Billion.
But what is digital waste?
Digital waste is the invisible environmental problem that affects everyone. Draining money, energy and natural resources.
It’s a rising environmental concern on par with other sustainability challenges.
That's why we created Dwindl.
App notifications & status updates
Constant social media and app notifications are not only bad for your health but are stored on servers consuming resources but serving no useful purpose.
Unopened emails, old media files & app notifications
Unread emails on servers, social media & app notifications, unused photos, videos and documents.
Duplicate back-ups & obsolete code
Outdated programming on live servers, redundant copies of data.
Cryptocurrency
Substantial energy consumption, resulting in high greenhouse gas emissions, and the generation of large volumes of ewaste.
Dark data, idle "Zombie" servers
Powered-on servers doing no useful work or stored but unused / unanalysed data.
Unused Apps/Ghost Websites
Inactive software/websites occupying server space.
Impact on: Net Zero
Digital Waste has a substantial environmental hidden footprint. Every email sent, every text message received, and every file stored on the cloud requires energy, contributing substantially to global greenhouse gas emissions. The environmental impact of digital technology is considerable, despite often being assumed to be negligible.
“Digital waste is far from carbon neutral; it consumes significant electricity and resources”
The physical reality of the cloud
While "the cloud" is often spoken of as an invisible, ethereal space floating in the atmosphere, its reality is deeply grounded in massive physical infrastructure known as data centres.
Whenever you save a photo, stream a video, or run a web application, your data isn't vanishing into thin air; it is being converted into digital signals and sent to giant warehouses filled with powerful computer servers. These data centres act as the physical brain of the internet, continuously storing and processing vast amounts of information. But they require vast amounts of resources to keep running.
Impact on:
Read more about the impact of digital waste on our environment, water, the grid and other resources.
The impact of AI
AI is already being used across UK, from big business, local councils to policing and the NHS. But without clear oversight and clean digital operations, the risks will grow.
Data centres and our water resources
The massive cooling demands of data centres processing our digital waste consume billions of litres of fresh water daily, heavily straining local watersheds and intensifying global water scarcity.
The hidden carbon footprint
Digital waste is far from carbon neutral; it consumes significant electricity and resources.
The relentless expansion of data centres to process our digital waste is placing an unprecedented strain on electricity grids and consuming vast amounts of water for cooling, significantly driving up the global carbon footprint.
Counting Carbon
Read our Counting Carbon blog with highlighted news and articles from all over the world about AI, data centres, climate change and more.
The benefits of reducing digital waste
Better for the environment.
Reducing digital waste not only supports sustainability goals but also fosters smarter, more responsible technology use across all sectors of society.
Regularly optimising storage systems
Recycling outdated hardware
Reduce energy consumption
Shrink
carbon footprint
Conserve water
Better
mental
health
Sustainable Digital Ecosystem
5 Minute Challenge
Old cloud storage, blurry photos, and unread emails all burn real-world energy. By clearing out your digital clutter—deleting old files, emails, and unsubscribing from junk—you directly reduce the strain on our planet’s resources.
Small actions, big impact
Effect on the environment
Effect on our wellbeing
Digital Clean Up
150 Minutes per month
Per month to clean up your old files
+ Water Saved
100 Million Litres
Save an estimated 75 to 100 million litres of water every month - that's 4 bottles of water per person
+ Carbon Saved
7,500 Tonnes
Save an estimated 5,000 to 7,500 tonnes of CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent) every month
+ Electricty Saved
60 million kWh
Save an estimated 40 to 60 million kWh - enough power 15,000 British homes for a whole year
+ Better Mental Health
20–30% Lower micro-anxiety
A clean digital workspace eliminates the daily friction of navigating cluttered files and overflowing inboxes. Employers benefit from a clear-headed, confident workforce less prone to silent digital burnout.
+ Increased Productivity
Less brain fog & distractions
Minimising digital noise allows yout to unlock long, uninterrupted blocks of focus, improving output quality and faster project completion rates.
+ Improved Wellbeing
Healthy tech relationship
Cultivating a healthy digital culture reduces systemic stress and feelings of being overwhelmed for individuals, creating a more positive work atmosphere and improved staff retention rates.
+ No more FOMO
Mental calm
By reducing your digital clutter you remove the artificial sense of urgency and missing out.
Start your challenge
Just 5 minutes daily is enough to have a real world impact not only on resources, but your mental health too. Pick a challenge to get started.
Friendly reminder: Always double-check your files and ensure you have a backup for important files before hitting delete. Read our full disclaimer here.
Nominate someone to start their Dwindl challenge
A standard text email stored forever doesn't use much, but the average marketing email with images, trackers, and attachments consumes data and requires servers to stay active 24/7 to index it. Deleting 100 junk/old emails and unsubscribing from 5 active lists stops future data transfers.
Unused apps run background processes, sync data, and pull updates. Furthermore, reducing how often we upload high-res photos or videos to social media directly lowers "network traffic" energy—the electricity required to transmit data across the internet to data centers.
High-resolution smartphone photos average 3–5 MB each, and videos can be hundreds of megabytes. Storing these in the cloud requires "hot storage" (servers running constantly to keep them instantly accessible). Deleting 1 GB of old photos/videos saves around 0.2 kWh of electricity annually in maintenance and server cooling.
Those ID docs, records and office files stored on the cloud requires "hot storage" (servers running constantly to keep them instantly accessible). Deleting 1 GB of unused documents saves around 0.2 kWh of electricity annually in maintenance and server cooling.
A smartphone user receives up to 60 to 80 notifications a day. Removing 70% of notifications (like promotional pings or game reminders) saves roughly 25g to 35g of CO2e per person, per month in combined data center and network transmission savings.
Reducing how often we upload high-res photos or videos to social media directly lowers "network traffic" — thus reducing the resources required to transmit to data centers. Not sharing that video can save 5g of CO2e during upload and immediate distribution to feeds.
Calculate your digital impact
Our Digital Impact Calculator will display your savings based on your clean-up actions.
Disclaimer: These figures are estimates based on average UK digital populations, data transfer rates, and carbon/water intensity metrics, intended for illustrative purposes to show the collective impact of digital cleanup.
We've had
20
submissions and collectively we saved...
Electricity Saved
110,743.7
Wh
Water Saved
821.88
ML
CO2e Saved
25,535.3
Emissions g
E-Waste Re-used
1
Items diverted from landfill
tools
Which tools to use reduce your digital waste
Digital waste affects everyone, which is why our solutions are built for every tier of society. We partner with and provide specialised tracking tools for: Public Sector & Infrastructure, B2B and B2C private enterprises and individuals looking to clear their digital clutter and reduce their personal carbon footprint.
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Make a bigger impact
The more people that know about digital waste the bigger the impact we can have. Join our sustainable digital revolution #letsDwindl
Success Stories
Read our highlighted blogs and positive tech news from around the globe - because we want a digital world that serves our future, without costing the planet.
Social news
Digital waste in social media. Join the digital waste revolution #LetsDwindl
