Most of what an organisation stores is never opened again after it is written, and it is kept powered for years regardless. Deleting it is the only step in this whole subject that is large, free and entirely within your control — and it is the one nobody puts in the calendar.
The shape of the problem
Storage is a continuous cost. A file on a drive uses energy every second it exists — the drive powered, the cooling running — for as long as you keep it. Sending the same file costs energy for a few minutes and then stops.
So the footprint of your data is how long you keep it, multiplied by how many copies exist. Not how you sent it, and not how well it compresses.
Put that next to what is actually in most storage. Surveys of business data consistently find that a large share is never read after being written. The exact proportion depends on who is counting and how, and the methods are usually loose — but nobody who has audited their own storage disputes the direction.
Continuous cost, applied to data with no readers. That is the argument.
Where it piles up
- Every version of everything. Six exports of the same video, each a full copy. Nine files called
final-v3-actualfinal. - Working files kept like deliverables. RAW footage, project files, intermediate renders. Enormous, and almost never opened after sign-off.
- Backups of things that should not exist. If you never deleted it, your backup faithfully keeps it, often several generations deep.
- Sync nobody set up on purpose. Three services holding the same folder because each was configured separately.
- Shared folders with no owner. The one someone made in 2019 that everyone is slightly afraid to remove.
In media work the numbers get large fast: an hour of ProRes runs to hundreds of gigabytes, so a year of regular work is many terabytes, most of it unused footage.
Why deleting is the cheapest lever
Compare the options plainly:
- Compressing by a fifth cuts the footprint by a fifth, at the cost of a re-encode and possibly some quality.
- Switching to a greener provider lowers the carbon intensity of the energy — real, and it does nothing about the amount.
- Deleting removes the footprint entirely, immediately, at the cost of one decision.
100%
And deleting pays three ways at once, which is rare:
- Energy. The file stops costing anything.
- Money. Storage bills scale with volume.
- Risk. Data you deleted cannot leak. If it held personal data, keeping it with no purpose was a compliance problem anyway — storage limitation is a principle, not a suggestion.
Making it happen
It does not get done because deleting needs a decision and nothing forces one. Storage never fills up dramatically; it just costs a bit more each year.
Separate the categories. Deliverables, working files, personal data, financial records — different lifetimes. One rule for all four is how people end up hoarding, or deleting the wrong thing. How to choose the periods.
Write one sentence per category. "RAW and working files are deleted six months after final delivery." That is a policy.
Put it in the calendar. Twice a year. Deleting that depends on someone feeling like it does not happen.
Prefer defaults that expire. Where it fits, use a tool where deletion is the default instead of a chore. Free transfer tiers delete within a week or two, and that accidentally correct behaviour is doing you a favour — even when it is annoying. For work that should last, give it an end date anyway:
Check the backups. Deleting the working copy while three years of backups keep everything achieves little. Ask your provider how long deleted data lingers.
The counter-argument, taken seriously
There are good reasons to keep things. Clients come back. Disputes happen. Some records have legal retention periods. A photographer who deletes a wedding archive after six months will regret it.
None of that argues for keeping everything. It argues for keeping the deliverables and deleting the 700 frames that did not make the cut — the same care, a fraction of the volume.
The failure is rarely "we deleted too much". It is "we never decided, so we kept it all" — which is not a decision at all.
Perspective
For one person this is a small part of a footprint, and anyone calling inbox-clearing meaningful climate action is overselling it. The scale is worth keeping honest.
Where it is material: at organisational scale, in media work, and as a habit that happens to cut cost and legal exposure at the same time. If you are also choosing a provider, what actually makes one greener covers it — and what Yungle itself claims is on the sustainability page. Do that second. The vendor choice is worth ten minutes; the deletion habit is worth more than any vendor.