ECO Week 2026: The Great Digital Cleanup

This week, the ICS Paris community traded traditional brooms for digital ones! As part of our ECO Week 2026 initiatives, students and staff joined forces for World Digital Cleanup Day, turning a critical eye toward a hidden environmental culprit: our digital footprint.

From clearing out forgotten emails to safely recycling old tech, here is how our community stepped up to make a very real physical impact through digital action.

1. The Heavy Weight of the "Cloud" ☁️

It’s easy to think of the cloud as weightless, but our students learned a startling truth: the cloud is actually made up of over 12,000 massive, concrete data centers globally. These buildings require an immense amount of energy and natural resources to run 24/7.

To combat this, students and teachers spent the week spending the first 5 minutes of class hunting down digital waste. Armed with guides to navigate their Outlook inboxes and file systems, everyone moved old emails, sent messages, and obsolete files into the trash.

2. The Big Friday Count & House Competition 🏆

The excitement culminated on Friday during 3rd period. Students calculated the exact size of their "Digital Cleanup" folders and emptied their Outlook trash bins, logging their total deleted data into our school tracker.

To add some friendly sparks to the sustainability drive, the data is being tallied for an official House Competition! Stay tuned to see which House saved the most energy by slimming down their digital storage.

3. Beyond the Screen: E-Waste & Smart Energy Habits 🔋

Our eco-efforts didn't stop at deleting files. The community also tackled physical electronic waste and daily habits:

Device Recycling: Collection boxes were set up on the second floor, allowing students and staff to bring in old, unused devices to ensure they are recycled responsibly.
The Unplug Challenge: Everyone was reminded of a simple yet powerful daily habit—unplugging chargers when they aren't actively in use to prevent "vampire" energy draw.

📢 A Huge Thank You!

A massive thank you to all the teachers who facilitated this in their classrooms, to Andrew Rhodes for his invaluable help in preparing the instructional guides, and to our incredible students for taking active steps to reduce the environmental impact of their digital lives.

Let's keep these green habits going all year long