As the UK experiences one of its driest periods in history, the government has issued an unusual call to citizens: “Delete your old emails and photos.” This call goes beyond conventional water-saving advice and highlights the impact of digital habits on natural resource consumption.
UK plans to save water by deleting emails
The low rainfall experienced over the last six months has marked one of the most severe droughts recorded since 1976. Five regions have officially declared a drought, while six are experiencing prolonged dry conditions.
The government and the National Drought Group (NDG) have added a call for digital cleanup to traditional conservation measures such as stopping lawn watering, shortening shower times, and fixing leaky toilets.
According to the NDG’s striking proposal, deleting unnecessary emails, old photos, or unused digital files can indirectly reduce water consumption. The reason is that large amounts of water are used to cool the data centers where this data is stored.
Evaporation-based cooling systems, in particular, consume significant amounts of water to keep data centers running. Globally, data centers consume an estimated 560 billion liters of water annually.
However, this proposal has been criticized by some experts. According to the information provided, data centers operate with low energy consumption for extended periods after storing data, and the physical impact of deleted data is very limited.
The energy spent searching or deleting data archives can lead to increased resource consumption in the short term. Therefore, it is unlikely that individuals will achieve significant water savings through digital cleaning.
