Digital Cleanup Day: 9 Activity Ideas to Engage Your Company

Digital Cleanup Day (also called World Digital Cleanup Day, and formerly Cyber World Cleanup Day) has become the must-attend event for companies that want to involve their employees in responsible digital (also known as green IT or sustainable IT). Every year in March, it mobilizes thousands of organizations in France, Belgium, Switzerland and more than 122 countries.

It is a great opportunity to run hands-on activities that are educational and engaging ... and to turn an abstract CSR goal into a tangible collective effort!

In this complete guide, we cover everything: what Digital Cleanup Day is, its 4 official challenges, the key figures from recent editions, and 9 activity ideas tested in companies to make your next edition a success.

What is Digital Cleanup Day?

Launched in 2020 by the Institut du Numérique Responsable (INR, the French Sustainable IT Institute) and World Cleanup Day France, Digital Cleanup Day is a worldwide day dedicated to raising awareness of the environmental impact of digital technology. Since 2023, it has been carried internationally by the Let's Do It World association.

The principle is simple: let every user (individual, employee, student, public servant) take concrete action on their digital footprint through gestures anyone can do.

The event takes place every year in March, with actions spread over the preceding week. The Swiss and Belgian INRs (Institut suisse du Numérique Responsable, Belgian Institute for Sustainable IT) joined the movement in 2022.

To understand the global stakes of responsible digital and the framework this event belongs to, read our complete guide to responsible digital.

The 4 official Digital Cleanup Day challenges

Digital Cleanup Day is built around 4 complementary challenges, each addressing a different lever of impact:

• Digital Cleanup Data: delete unnecessary apps and useless files (blurry photos, duplicates, outdated documents) on smartphones, computers and tablets. A gesture anyone can make, which creates immediate awareness.
• Digital Cleanup Reuse: give digital equipment a second life. According to ADEME (the French Agency for Ecological Transition), between 54 and 110 million smartphones are currently sitting in French drawers, two thirds of which still work. That is a huge pool for the refurbishing industry.
• Digital Cleanup Recycling: recover end-of-life equipment through the collection of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE, called DEEE/D3E in France). Partners such as Ecologic support companies on this part.
• Digital Cleanup Awareness: an official challenge dedicated to raising awareness among employees, citizens and students about responsible digital. It is probably the lever with the greatest long-term impact; without lasting awareness, the other challenges do not stick.

Why organize a Digital Cleanup Day activity at your company?

Digital technology is now a major environmental, social and economic issue: 4.4% of France's carbon footprint, or 29.5 million tonnes of CO2 per year (ADEME-Arcep 2025). And this footprint could triple by 2050 without collective action.

Organizing a Digital Cleanup Day activity at your company lets you:

• Raise awareness among employees of the real impacts of digital technology
• Give concrete, measurable actions they can take
• Rally people around a visible, engaging CSR initiative
• Save money (equipment, storage, IT performance)
• Document your approach for your CSR / CSRD report

But a successful Digital Cleanup Day depends on one essential thing: choosing the actions with the highest impact. And that is where many companies go wrong.

Responsible digital: where are the real levers of impact?

As you may know, the impacts of our everyday use of digital technology are many:

• pollution in the extraction zones and the landfills where our devices end their lives;
• mental health of overconnected users;
• forced labor in mines and assembly plants;
• geopolitical conflicts over the management of key resources;
• destruction of biodiversity to build our infrastructure;
• water stress caused by cooling data centers and extracting metals.

Organizing activities for Digital Cleanup Day is a great idea. But how do you choose the actions with the most impact?

If you have read our overview of the stakes of responsible digital, you already know that the main source of digital impact is the manufacturing of user devices. In other words, the manufacturing of the individual devices we use every day: phone, computer, TV screen ... That is where we can have the most impact.

As a reminder, here is a small infographic from our friends at ADEME:

https://agirpourlatransition.ademe.fr/particuliers/evaluer-son-impact/calculer-empreinte-carbone/calculez-empreinte-carbone-usages-numeriques

Second, we can look at how we use digital technology. Even though usage represents only 25% of greenhouse gas emissions, these are simple gestures we can apply every day.

On this point, keep in mind that video (video streaming, adult content, YouTube and social networks) accounts for 80% of the data traffic on the internet. So our video consumption is where our actions have the most impact when it comes to usage.

https://agirpourlatransition.ademe.fr/acteurs-education/enseigner/catalogue/pollution-numerique-clic-declic

Digital Cleanup Day: our 9 company-tested activity ideas

Now that you have the main orders of magnitude, how do you act effectively inside your company? Here are 9 activity ideas, grouped by theme, with their pros and cons to help you choose.

Theme 1: Understand to act, or how to build a shared base of knowledge

The first thing to do is to create a spark among employees. For that, nothing beats understanding and absorbing the different orders of magnitude, so people become aware of the topic and act in the right place. Many formats exist, so choose the one that best fits your constraints:

Idea 1 - Broadcast the Responsible Digital MOOC from the Institut du Numérique Responsable (INR)

The INR offers two online courses (MOOCs) to raise awareness of the challenges and best practices of responsible digital.

• The "Responsible Digital Awareness" module lasts about 30 minutes and introduces the issues linked to how we use digital technology.
• The "Responsible Digital" MOOC offers more complete content and covers the theory needed to master the fundamentals of the responsible digital approach. Plan about 4.5 hours to go through the 12 modules.

What we love:

• A free format that is easy to roll out in a company
• Several modules, so people can move at their own pace

What we like less:

• An individual format with no human interaction
• Yet another MOOC, and it is not always easy to engage employees with these formats
• Off-the-shelf content that is not specifically adapted to the messages you want to share internally

Idea 2 - Organize a web conference on responsible digital

Whether it is a public figure or a member of your IT department, what better way to make the case for more sustainable digital technology than to welcome an expert on the topic?

What we love:

• Expertise on the subject, which lets you answer participants' questions;
• The chance to focus on the specifics of your company

What we like less:

• It is hard to offer content suited to every level (beginner, intermediate, expert) while keeping participants' attention.
• Participants stay passive.

⚠️ Be careful: French experts on the subject are not in short supply, but their availability is limited. To identify the right profiles, see our selection of 6 people to follow in responsible digital.

Failing that, you can organize a screening followed by a discussion. A few recommended talks (all in French):

• Talk by Vincent COURBOULAY, "Numérique Responsable", given in May 2022 to students at École Polytech Montpellier (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izSkB0ucfQU&ab_channel=ÉcolePolytechMontpellier);
• Talk by Aurore STEPHANT, "Ruée minière au XXI siècle. jusqu'où les limites seront-elles repoussées ?" (the 21st-century mining rush: how far will the limits be pushed?), given in June 2022 at an event organized by USI (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8RMX8ODWQs&t=69s&ab_channel=USIEvents);
• Talk by Guillaume PITRON, "Le numérique : l'incroyable pollution de nos usages" (digital technology: the incredible pollution of our habits), given in March 2022 for the Tilt! channel (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgSJLtsTCaM&ab_channel=Tilt!).
• Talk by Frédéric BORDAGE, "Sobriété Numérique : les clés pour comprendre et agir avec Frédéric BORDAGE - GreenIT.fr" (digital sobriety: the keys to understand and act), published in January 2022 by our partner firm Wemanity (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GB7MeJziYNY&ab_channel=Wemanity)

Idea 3 - Create a quiz on the main issues of responsible digital

Games are always an effective way to engage employees. Why not offer an in-house quiz that lets them discover the main orders of magnitude and the actions your company has already taken? A challenge that the greatest number of people can take part in!

What we love:

• A free format that is easy to roll out
• The chance to add context specific to your company

What we like less:

• You need to watch the quality of your sources and the messages you share. It can be tempting to talk about email management, because it resonates with employees and lets them take a quick action. But do not forget the orders of magnitude: the main source of digital impact (by far) is the manufacturing of user devices.

Idea 4 - Run a digital serious game ❤️

Capture employees' attention in an original way with a responsible digital serious escape game. Through a fun, collaborative 1h30 adventure, participants discover the environmental stakes of digital technology and the main eco-gestures to adopt.

Easy to deploy, available in French and English, for 3 to 500 employees at the same time, it is the most effective option if your time is limited.

What we love: easy to organize and deploy, an active role for participants, and the option to customize the content to address your company's specific challenges.

The serious escape game directly answers the 4th official DCD challenge: awareness. More than 100 companies and 15,000 employees have already been trained with our turnkey format, including Decathlon, Enedis, Nexity and Accenture Belgium.

👉 Discover our responsible digital serious escape game

Theme 2: Act on the manufacturing of personal devices (75% of the impact)

As you have understood, our personal devices account for 75% of the environmental impact of digital technology. But how can we act to reduce our footprint?

In France, ADEME estimates that between 54 and 110 million smartphones are sitting in our drawers, and that two thirds of these devices still work. But what about the rest?

Whether through reuse (when possible) to extend the life of equipment, or through recycling to give your equipment a second life, you can help make your hardware last longer.

Idea 5 - Organize a device repair workshop (or Repair Café)

Digital Cleanup Day is a chance to host a Repair Café inside the company so that employees can learn how to easily repair their phones.

These workshops are also a good way to encourage participants to protect their equipment (phone case, laptop sleeve or headphone case) and to remind them that they can give working, unused equipment to relatives or to a charity.

Idea 6 - Set up collection points for working used electrical devices

Setting up collection points opens the discussion on how we use our electrical devices and lets you communicate about the stakes of more responsible digital technology. Collecting the phones and computers sleeping in your closets is a chance to donate your old equipment to charities so it can be redistributed or refurbished.

Players such as Ecodair, Recommerce or Back Market Pro now offer turnkey solutions for companies.

Idea 7 - Set up WEeeTRI boxes so unusable devices get recycled

Non-working digital equipment is full of resources. Collecting it means recovering raw materials. You can organize a stand with awareness materials to show employees the huge quantities of resources needed to manufacture our equipment (600 kg of minerals for a single computer!), or display images comparing the enormous size of extraction quarries with the material actually extracted.

Theme 3: Act on our everyday habits

Idea 8 - Organize data cleanup workshops

No, having full storage and a slow device is not a reason to replace your hardware right away. We regularly think about cleaning up at home or at the office, but the digital devices that accompany us every day are not so lucky. Yet a little cleanup could give you better performance, especially if your device is overloaded. Let's go through the actions to clean up your data in just a few clicks.

• Cleaning up your smartphone and tablet

Apps and photos often take up most of our storage space.

So we encourage you to

1. delete unused apps (yes, really, you can delete that hiking app you last used on vacation in 2021!)
2. sort through and delete your photos (we know you are attached to them, these photos captured an important moment in your life ... but is it really useful to keep the blurry or identical ones?)

• Cleaning up your computer and your Drive

Besides being good for your computer's performance, sorting your files also saves time every day. No more hours spent looking for the right version of the right file. So do not hesitate to delete your FINAL, FINAL2 or FINAL3 videos; what matters is having the latest version.

• Cleaning up your emails

Even though the impact of emails is much smaller than that of our devices, that is no reason to do nothing!

Here is the ultimate checklist for a lighter inbox and fewer distractions:

❏ Sort through your inbox and your sent folder❏ Unsubscribe from newsletters you do not read❏ Mark unwanted senders as SPAM❏ Adopt good email habits (limit the number and size of attachments, limit the number of recipients and shorten or remove your signature).

Idea 9 - Display awareness campaigns in the offices

To catch employees' attention in the office, nothing works better than breaking their habits with a display or a staging that stands out. It is a chance to invite them to adopt a few eco-gestures. Here are a few examples that inspire us!

Congratulations to Leroy Merlin and to Crédit Agricole GIP for their initiatives.

What we love:

• The chance to highlight figures specific to your company;
• Reusable all year round, because the stakes need to stay in mind beyond Digital Cleanup Day week.

What we like less:

• Hard to set up just a few days before Digital Cleanup Day.

How to organize your Digital Cleanup Day: a checklist

Want to join the adventure and organize your own event? Here is a practical checklist:

1. Official registration: create an account on the official site digital-cleanup-day.fr from October/November to access the tools and resources.
2. Choose your dates: the event takes place in March every year, with actions spread over the preceding week depending on your availability.
3. Choose your activities: pick 2 or 3 ideas from the 9 above. Our recommendation: start with a strong educational activity (idea 4, the serious escape game) followed by concrete actions (ideas 6 and 8).
4. Internal communication: use the communication materials provided by the official DCD, plus your own internal communication (HR email, intranet post, posters).
5. Impact measurement: register your Digital Cleanup on the official site to contribute to the collective results and get a participation certificate for your CSR / CSRD report.

Digital Cleanup Day 2027: join the movement

The 8th edition of Digital Cleanup Day will take place in March 2027. It is the ideal chance to turn this 2027 responsible digital week into a lever of engagement for your teams.

For more information, visit the Digital Cleanup Day website.

As a reminder, the Institut du Numérique Responsable and Digital Cleanup Day provide many resources to help you run the day and measure its impact.

Do not forget to register your Digital Cleanup on the official site.

Results of the latest Digital Cleanup Day editions

Digital Cleanup Day is now organized in 122 countries and mobilizes thousands of companies, schools, local authorities and citizens every year.

While we wait for the 2026 results, here are the results of the 2025 edition.

Results of the 2025 edition (6th edition)

The 2025 edition (March 10 to 15, 2025) confirmed the movement's growing momentum, with 1,936 Digital Cleanups organized in France and more than 300,000 people reached. The Wokies was also an official partner of this edition alongside the INR, offering our responsible digital serious escape game during an official awareness session.

Key figures from the official results:

• 996 TB of data deleted (54 million emails, 35 million files)
• 14,371 devices reused (including 11,825 smartphones)
• 580 tonnes of WEEE collected for recycling
• 944 tonnes of CO2 equivalent avoided in total, equal to 532 round trips between Paris and New York or 37,758 trees needed to absorb that CO2

For the detailed results, visit the Digital Cleanup Day site, results of the 6th edition.

2026 edition (7th edition): looking back at the mobilization

The 7th edition of Digital Cleanup Day took place from March 16 to 21, 2026, once again mobilizing thousands of organizations around the world. This edition made the 4th "Awareness" challenge official, already practiced by many players but now recognized as an official pillar of the movement.

The official figures for the 2026 edition will be published by the INR in the weeks following the results webinar held at the end of April 2026. We will update this article as soon as the results are available.

To follow Digital Cleanup Day news and access all the organizing resources, visit the official site digital-cleanup-day.fr.

Make Digital Cleanup Day your big responsible digital moment

Digital Cleanup Day is not just a symbolic day: it is a unique opportunity to turn an abstract CSR goal into a concrete collective effort, with a measurable impact.

Want to raise your employees' awareness of responsible digital in a concrete, engaging way for your next edition?

Our turnkey serious escape game is designed to be deployed as part of Digital Cleanup Day. It runs 1h30, in French or English, for 3 to 500 employees at the same time, with a participation report you can add to your CSR results. More than 100 companies (Decathlon, Enedis, Nexity, Accenture Belgium ...) have already trusted us.

👉 Book a session with our team

👉 Discover the responsible digital serious escape game