Help Yourself AND the Planet!

Our Green Team recently ran a 'Take Out Your Digital Trash' workshop and here are some of my takeaways!

Let's start with fast facts that may surprise you:

• As shared by The Good Planet, if we deleted 500 unread emails (assuming they’re not important emails), that would delete 175 grams of carbon dioxide if each email contributes 0.3 grams of CO2. 
• In addition, over 100 billion (yes, billion with a "B") spam e-mails are sent every single day. That equates to the carbon impact of almost 3 million passenger cars on the road on any given day.

Now that we have a few data points to show why this topic matters, let's talk about what we can do about it.

Make an Impact

There are many, low-impact ways we can minimize our environmental footprint. We encouraged Mimecasters to implement at least ONE of these steps this month as a way to recognize Earth Month:

1. Unsubscribe from unwanted newsletters. I get it, you may have that one old personal e-mail account that you used to sign up for the a newsletter and get 10% off back in 2022. From that point on, it's been a story of that poor inbox receiving new e-mail blasts every week. Do the planet a favor by logging in and unsubscribing.
2. Check your trashes. Almost every tool we access comes with a trash or "recycling" bin. It's time to go in and actually delete those files if you don't need them! Otherwise, it's doing more harm than good.
3. Don't save 7 different versions and keep them all forever. As someone who is always worried about losing my project progress or reference documents, I'm the first one to admit to having V1, V2, V47212, and eventually V23876423. Fast forward two years later from those all being saved, we can all probably delete a few of them and still have what we need.
4. Remove old applications on your smartphone. Your computer isn't the only thing with a carbon footprint. Your phones, tablets, and other electronics do as well. If you haven't opened an application in a long time, take a few seconds to uninstall. It'll free up space, improve battery life, and limit the amount of data being backed up.

Thank you for taking a read of this post! In the time you've gone through, you could've probably taken one of the steps, so let's get to it!