[Thank you Bryan Alexander for bringing this to our attention.]
Amidst one of the driest summers in recent memory, the UK’s Environment Agency—supported by the National Drought Group—has made an unexpected appeal: delete old emails and photos. This unorthodox recommendation is not about decluttering your inbox, but about helping conserve water, underscoring how even tiny digital actions can ripple out to tangible environmental impacts.
Higher education leans heavily on the cloud: research archives, recorded lectures, sprawling email threads, and vast multimedia databases. Yet these intangible assets live in data centres—facilities infamous for their intensive water usage, as they cool servers to prevent overheating. Most large-scale cooling systems draw from public water supplies, often competing with community needs. With the AI boom accelerating data demand, these pressures are only expected to grow. The Environment Agency already warns of a looming daily water shortfall of five billion liters by 2055, without factoring in the full weight of AI-related consumption.
While deleting a single email may seem trivial, collectively such actions can lighten the burden on cooling systems at scale. That’s the principle behind the agency’s advice—small behavioral changes can aggregate into significant impact. The call to trim digital clutter comes alongside traditional water-saving steps like fixing leaks, taking shorter showers, capturing rainwater, and reducing outdoor water use.
For colleges and universities, the connection between digital behavior and resource conservation is an opportunity to model sustainability. Digital housekeeping campaigns could encourage staff and students to purge outdated files, trim redundant email chains, and archive with intent. Institutions can audit cloud storage use, revisit data retention policies, and prioritize providers that invest in energy- and water-efficient infrastructure. These choices can be paired with curriculum initiatives that make students aware of the climate–digital nexus, grounding sustainability not just in labs and gardens, but in inboxes and servers.
The call to delete emails follows England’s driest spring since 1893 and its fourth official heatwave this year, with multiple regions in drought. The National Drought Group has been meeting regularly to manage mounting water risks, including proposals for billions in investment toward new reservoirs, leak reduction, and water transfer projects. All of this reinforces a key lesson: the digital world is inseparable from the material world, and higher education can lead by aligning digital practices with environmental responsibility.
Bryan Alexander’s earlier prompts—WiFi or air conditioning? cloud storage or refrigeration?—now resonate with even more urgency. Deleting an email may not save the planet, but it’s a symbolic and practical step toward recognizing that every byte has a footprint, and every action has consequences.
Sources:
Delete your emails to save water during drought, says agency – The Times
UK government suggests deleting files to save water – The Verge
AI boom means regulator cannot predict future water shortages in England – The Guardian
National Drought Group meets after driest spring in 132 years – gov.uk
