You've got drought: UK gov suggests you save water by . . . deleting old emails
- Reference: 1755025681
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2025/08/12/uk_government_delete_emails_water/
- Source link:
"Simple, everyday choices — such as turning off a tap or deleting old emails — also really helps the collective effort to reduce demand and help preserve the health of our rivers and wildlife," Helen Wakeham, the agency's director of water and NDG chair said in a [1]statement . The NDG also suggested deleting old pictures.
Turning off the tap and avoiding unnecessary water use will certainly help to ease drought conditions. But, while it's true that datacenter thermal management systems can consume large quantities of water in order to keep the servers from overheating, it's not immediately clear how big an impact clearing out your spam folder will really have.
[2]
The Register has reached out to Microsoft and Google, two of the largest email service providers on the net for comment, but hadn't heard back at the time of publication.
[3]
One thing that UK netizens could do to curb their water use digitally is lay off the generative AI apps and services. And with Google's Workspace and Microsoft Office 365 positively crawling with AI features, that might include avoiding sending extraneous emails. Bad news, folks, the meeting could have been an email, but we're trying to save water here.
[4]Google agrees to pause AI workloads to protect the grid when power demand spikes
[5]AI going critical: Hyundai to help build nuclear-powered datacenter in Texas
[6]Mistral AI environmental report confirms AI is a hungry, thirsty beast
[7]Trump AI plan rips the brakes out of the car and gives Big Tech exactly what it wanted
A recent environmental [8]report from French model builder Mistral AI found that generating a single 400 token response — amounting to about a page worth of text — using its Mistral Large 2 model consumed roughly 45 milliliters of water and generated about 1.14 grams of CO2e. While that might not sound like much, it adds up quickly as we scale to millions of users with dozens of requests each.
These findings closely align with an earlier [9]study that estimated generating between 10-50 medium sized responses using a model in the 175 billion parameter range would consume about half a liter of water.
According to the UK's NDG, five areas of England are now officially in drought and six more are experiencing prolonged dry weather following what is now the driest six months since 1976. The government defines the situation as a "nationally significant incident." ®
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[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/national-drought-group-meets-to-address-nationally-significant-water-shortfall
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aJu5b4c6XxRy2hSBY0sxcwAAAM8&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aJu5b4c6XxRy2hSBY0sxcwAAAM8&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/04/google_ai_datacenter_grid/
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/04/fermi_america_nuclear_datacenter/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/24/mistral_environmental_report_ai_cost/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/24/ai_trump_plan_/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/24/mistral_environmental_report_ai_cost/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/15/ai_water_datacenter/
[10] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Make all those AI Bit-Barns
Water neutral as well as only powered by renewable electrons.
That might slow some of them down a bit.
I first thought it was a Reg-Joke when I read the headline
but it is not a joke, actually written there on gov.uk ...
Not using the internet and not using a computer saves more.
From the Department that brought you classics such as
... Duck and Cover.
Comes "delete your old emails"... which would probably cause more energy and water use than leaving them alone.
But they still roll out the red carpet for Big Tech in as far as utilities and tax breaks go.
Re: From the Department that brought you classics such as
> ... Duck and Cover.
I thought this was 'murican, not 'ingdomian?
Re: From the Department that brought you classics such as
Like a lot of cold war stuff that people laugh at, duck and cover will be worthwhile in some marginal cases so you might as well tell everyone to do it.
Re: From the Department that brought you classics such as
If 'murican no, not marginal any more. Needed again in schools, though not due to atomic dangers...
The obligatory "But how many hogsheads of ale is this equivalent to?"
I tend to be more effective at killing my old emails and naughties when I have wetted my whistle. But I also get distracted while grading the naughties and soon the noodle nods off.
Inadvertently environmentally friendly
So my decision to move to Linux has made me environmentally friendlier. The new pc probably hasn't got enough oomph to run Win11 well I happily have avoided any onboard AI, Microsith spyware or anything else to use water. I'd use even less if I hadn't decided to replace my old dell.
E-mails are not the problem.
The UK has just had one of its wettest winters ever. The problem is that the useless, greedy, corrupt fecking govt and the useless, greedy, corrupt fecking Water authorities, despite knowing that the climate was changing, didn't build the reservoirs we needed. For taking our money and just putting it in the pockets of their shareholders, those responsible in the water industry should be in prison.
Now we get blamed and punished by those who have failed us, who should themselves be paying for it with their jobs, their ill gotten gains and their freedom. And when it is national infrastructure, it is not fraud, it is treason.
I would love to know how many times COBRA met to consider issues like drought and flooding over the last 2 decades, and whether any of the cabinet could be arsed to turn up.
Stupidest. Press. Release. Ever.
We're clearly in the silly season when the most dire, worthless pish can get media attention.
Deleting old email or whatever won't make the slightest difference to the temperature of the device where it was stored. The rust will still be spinning or the SSD will still be powered on. Which means the device will need the same amout of cooling water (if it had any) as it did before the old email got deleted. Same goes for temperatures at the DC if those emails were stored in the cloud somewhere.
I wonder too if the oxygen thief who put their name to this piece of mindless drivel went to the bother of getting any data to back it up. If they deleted any old email, what difference did it make to their water bill?
Instead of coming up with brain-dead press releases, what is the National Drought Group actually doing to reduce the possibility of droughts, for instance fixing the leaks in the nation's water pipes or replacing the worn-out taps and washers in our homes? Where are their press releases about that?
I wonder how much water could be saved by government agencies voluntarily reducing their output of drivel like this by 10%.
Soft
Do they not know that likely emails don't actually get deleted? They are too precious in the age of AI to just be gone.
"is deleted" flag gets set and you won't see the email anymore, but it will continue to exist.
can't we just spray...
the DC servers with water and put them out of our misery forever?
I've been saving
water by drinking my own piss
Re: I've been saving
Are you Captain Redbeard Rum?
It beggars belief that the UK could ever have a water shortage. We are small island surrounded by billions of gallons of the stuff and it falls out of the sky almost continuously for 9 month of the year. Some areas regularly get flooded every winter. If there are water shortages, it is entirely due to lack of investment in storage and distribution infrastructure by the privatised water companies.
Maybe the UK could regulate and require that data centres invest in non-evaporative cooling and help investment in co-locating facilities that can use waste heat from data centres to save energy.