Saving the environment by deleting our digital waste

Most of us have an excess of unnecessary emails, files, apps, photos, videos and digital waste that continues to consume energy, even when we have forgotten it. March 18, 2023 is the annual Digital Cleanup Day, a global effort to reduce energy-related CO2 emissions by deleting our digital waste.

In a previous blog post, “Ways to declutter your digital life”, we challenged you to see how much email, Google Drive and computer files you can delete and organize in one hour. Imagine if you did this every week!

Today let’s take a look at a few more places we store files that should be reviewed, organized, archived or deleted.

Google Shared Drives

Shared drives are a great way to centralize and keep files that belong to a team. If members leave, the files stay in the shared drive. Teams may have difficulty organizing and maintaining their shared drives, resulting in a build-up of large amounts of redundant, obsolete or trivial documentation. Maintaining unnecessary documents consumes electronic storage space and makes it difficult to find important documents quickly.

Tips to clean up your Shared Drives:

• Have a good folder structure. Don’t let your shared drive become a mess. Use folders and subfolders of no more than 4 to 5 levels. Clicking more than 3 times to find a document can be confusing.
• Use consistent file names so they are easily searchable and findable. Suggested formats: FileNameDATEVersion or DATEFileNameVersion
• Document how the shared drive is structured as a reference and for onboarding new members.
• Review existing files. Use the UMN records retention schedule to know what to archive, retain or delete.
• Create a schedule to maintain the shared drive.

WeVideo

If you have used Extension’s WeVideo account to edit and create videos, it’s easy to forget about all of the raw video footage, photos and graphics you may have uploaded into the account. We do not have unlimited storage and WeVideo is not intended to store your media or finished videos. Use this tool to work on projects until your final video is created, exported and shared via YouTube, Kaltura Mediaspace or other platform. We ask that you remove what you have uploaded to make room for new projects.

How to delete your Media in WeVideo

1. In WeVideo, click Media

2. Select the media you want to delete.

• TIP: toggle between list and grid view to see your media
• TIP: select multiple media by pressing CTRL or SHIFT as you click on them

3. Click the Delete button

How to Delete a Project in WeVideo

Please note: Deleting a project does NOT delete the media contained in the project or the exports created from the project.

1. In WeVideo, click Projects

2. Click the three dot menu button on the project and select Delete

YouTube

YouTube is another place where many of us tend to leave content unattended for a long time. Do you have videos on YouTube that are outdated? Is the information in the videos still relevant? How many people are currently viewing your videos? Are they located in the right channel? Schedule time to review, update and organize what is there and delete what is no longer needed.

If we take the time to clean up our digital life, we not only are reducing our carbon footprint but we extend the life of our devices and have fewer files to manage!