Do your spring IT cleaning!

Wednesday May 19, 2021

Reducing the digital footprint of our research activities is part of our responsibilities as a member of Laval University and a member of the research community. This activity aimed to reduce the digital environmental footprint of the research centers that joined this initiative, i.e. CRMR and  CEF.

This involved taking half an hour or an hour to delete outdated files and emails from our computers and our storage servers, noting the memory space thus freed up on the different platforms (emails and files), and ‘inform CERMA to make an overall assessment (see the actions to be taken below).

The random draw among those who responded designated Jeanne Desrochers-Arsenault to receive the $50 gift certificate to the bulk food store L’Escargot gourmand!

This activity was preceded by a conference on the impact of digital technology by:

Maxime Pinsard, Shifters Montreal at 12:30 p.m.

DiagnosTIC, environmental impact of digital technology in Quebec and around the world

Watch or rewatch the conference.

Here are the actions to take to reduce your digital footprint:

• Clean up your computer files (hard drives, institutional servers): delete all unnecessary or obsolete files, superfluous, irrelevant or outdated files, old versions of a document
• Clean up your institutional emails
  • delete unnecessary, outdated emails and/or, at the very least, “burdensome” attachments
  • classify your emails
  • schedule regular archiving of your emails → (this also avoids having a full inbox)
• Also clean up cloud platforms that store personal data:
  • iCloud
  • Dropbox
  • Drive
  • Online emails (Gmail, Hotmail, etc.)
• Learn about how to reduce your digital footprint (read the document developed by CERMA and Shifters Montréal)

Details of the actions to be taken can be found here.

Contact us for any questions about this activity.