Do your spring computer cleaning!
Thursday, April 21, 2022

Reducing the digital footprint of our research activities is part of our responsibilities as a member of Laval University and the research community. This activity aims to better understand the origin of our digital footprint, to reduce our own footprint and to discover how.

In practice, it consists in taking half an hour or an hour to delete your outdated files and emails from your computers and storage servers, to note the memory space thus freed up on the various platforms (emails and files), and to inform CERMA in order to make a global assessment (see below the actions to be taken).

A random draw among those who have responded will allow the winners to receive a $100 gift certificate to L’Escargot Gourmand, a zero-waste food store! A draw will be held for CERMA members and another for other Laval University members.

The activity will take place on Thursday, April 21, 2022 in room VCH-2880 but will be accessible online. Registration: follow this link.

Course of the activity :

9:00 a.m.: Conference “The non-virtual reality of digital: what impacts on the environment?” (in French)

Françoise Berthoud

Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) et director of EcoInfo (ecoinfo.cnrs.fr) that puts knowledge about the environmental impacts of digital technology online

See the presentation abstract (in French)

9:45 a.m.: recommendations for doing your digital housework

Description of the actions you can take to reduce your digital footprint and enter the draw

If you can’t attend the presentation, here are the actions you can take to reduce your digital footprint:

Clean up your computer files (hard drives, institutional servers): delete all unnecessary or obsolete folders, superfluous, irrelevant or outdated files, old versions of a document

Clean up your institutional e-mail

• delete unnecessary and outdated e-mails and/or, at the very least, “heavy” attachments
• classify your e-mails
• schedule a 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 email (Gmail, Hotmail, etc.)

Learn more about how to reduce your digital footprint (read the document developed by CERMA with the support of the Vice-Rector for External, International and Health Affairs and the collaboration of the Direction des technologies et de l’information)

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

Contact us for any question about this activity.