Digital Cleanup Day
Digital Cleanup Day is a day dedicated to cleaning up our digital lives, just like we clean up our physical environment on World Cleanup Day
Digital Cleanup Day UK coordinates Digital Cleanup Day in the UK and is also a member of the international Let’s Do It World network.
Digital Cleanup Day 2026:
M+C Saatchi #NotOnMyPhone campaign
World Cleanup Day joined up with M+C Saatchi Group and Bauer Media Outdoor in March 2026 for the #NotOnMyPhone campaign, which aimed to raise awareness of the environmental cost of the photos we store on our smartphones. The campaign focuses on everyday images we often forget to delete once we’ve used them: blurry photos, duplicate selfies, screenshots and forgotten receipts. Photos like these were displayed on large outdoor billboards in cities including London, Manchester, Leeds, Glasgow, and Edinburgh along with the #NotOnMyPhone tag. The campaign originated in the UK and was expanded to South Africa, Dubai, and Brazil through M+C Saatchi’s global network, linking directly to the wider Digital Cleanup Day movement.
If we spend 30 minutes deleting around 100 unwanted photos and videos, this can save a small but measurable amount of CO₂ — roughly comparable to a short car journey (depending on storage and file size). If all of us do this collectively, it can make a real, measurable difference. By transforming an invisible issue into a tangible, everyday action, #NotOnMyPhone demonstrates how small behavioural changes can generate a meaningful environmental impact if we all commit to them.
In 2026 World Cleanup Day UK worked with Northumbria University, who launched a one-week campaign over the five days leading up to Digital Cleanup Day, with videos and step-by step guides focusing on different aspects of digital cleanups being published on the university intranet each day. Themes and associated activities included managing your OneDrive, Teams and Teams recordings, emails, shared digital storage and forming better habits around data storage.
Alongside this, the IT department looked at ways to save on data storage across the organisation. Data usage storage was measured before and after the campaign, showing that 41.8TB (41,800 GB) of data had been deleted, representing almost 9% of total data usage storage at Northumbria University. This is a saving of one tonne of CO2e over a year. The team are building on this success with other changes such as reducing individual staff OneDrive limits and introducing regular automatic deletion of deleted email folders.