Studies of environmental impact have shown that 10% of the world’s electricity is used by computers to power, among other things, the Internet and its networks. Every year, 900 million tonnes of CO2 are generated by “digital waste” – emails, music and photos stored in the cloud. In Madagascar, the environmental association “Let’s Do It Madagascar” organized an information meeting on Wednesday, March 1, to raise awareness among students and NGO leaders about “Digital Clean Up” or digital cleaning. A concept still unknown to many on the Big Island.
as reported from Antananarivo, Sarah Tétaud
Sending an email generates carbon. Keep it, too, like storing personal data on virtual platforms. Because these millions of servers spread around the world and operate 24 hours a day consume energy and generate greenhouse gases.
Specializing in the fight against waste, the association “Let’s do it Madagascar” under the leadership of Ornella Assimini has decided to tackle digital pollution by raising awareness of its effects.
“The idea of digital cleanup is not to ban people from using the Internet or to ban the evolution towards this world of digital storage,” says Ornella Assimini. But the idea is just to be more responsible in our digital applications, not to waste space, not to overconsume. In Madagascar, we are far from a major polluter yet, if we compare ourselves to the rest of the world. But you have to understand that the trend is going towards it. And the idea is to immediately introduce good practice among the citizens so as not to move against this fatal trend for our environment. ”
Whales and digital waste
In the audience there are several future ambassadors of the case, such as Stéphanie Andrianaivoravelo. This communications officer for the Cétamada Association, which works for the conservation of marine mammals and their habitat in the Indian Ocean, is convinced of the message.
“Whales and digital waste, you might think there is no link, but in fact it is! Insists on Stéphanie Andrianaivoravelo. Because our digital waste represents a large amount of CO2, and CO2 directly affects our oceans, the entire marine ecosystem and especially whales that live in them. ”
World Digital Cleanup Day takes place on March 20th. The ability for all of us to permanently delete some of our emails, our duplicate photos, and to unsubscribe from newsletters and all kinds of polluting messages from our mailboxes … and our planet.
Since digital.worldcleanupday.org offers internet users who want to enter the number of megabytes deleted during this day to get new statistics.
►Also read: World Cleanup Day: comprehensive civic action to clean up the planet in one day
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