Millions urged to delete emails to save water during a 'nationally significant incident'

You're certainly not along if you've managed to accumulate thousands of unread emails in your inbox, but a new government initiative has urged millions to put the delete button to work in an effort to save water over summer.

You wouldn't want to live with thousands of unopened letters lying around your house yet millions of people let their email inboxes pile up year on year, with most not diligent enough to read through every single thing they get sent.

While cybersecurity experts have expressed the dangers of opening spam emails – especially if you clink on any links placed inside – there's still a middle ground that will leave your digital mailbox much nicer to look at.

If you were needing any motivation to start that clean up that you've been going on about for years then what's better that a government call to action, and it could be key to surviving a 'nationally significant incident'.

Environment officials have called on millions to delete their emails as a means of saving water (Getty Stock)

Why does everyone need to delete their emails?

As reported by the Metro, environmental officials in the United Kingdom have called on people to delete their emails in order to preserve water, as cloud storage systems require significant energy and water cooling in order to function.

Helen Wakeham, director of water at the Environment Agency, has outlined that "the current situation is nationally significant, and we are calling on everyone to play their part and help reduce the pressure on our water environment.

"Simple, everyday choices – such as turning off a tap or deleting old emails – also really help the collective effort to reduce demand and help preserve the health of our rivers and wildlife."

It's a particularly prevalent issue right now across the UK in the height of summer, as some areas have experience drought that lasts several weeks, leaving water reserves dangerously low.

How does deleting emails save water?

All email inboxes are stored on the cloud, meaning that you can both view your inbox no matter where you are or what device you're using, and that it isn't reliant on the storage of the user's device in order to receive new mail.

What this means as a consequence though is that the servers that operate the cloud have to draw significant amounts of power in order to keep everything online, and require large amounts of water in order to stay cool to maintain peak performance.

Emails are stored on the cloud, and that requires significant amounts of water in order to function (Dean Mouhtaropoulos/Getty Images)

Large data centers can consume upwards of 5 million gallons of water every single day – around the same as a town with 10,000 people – and this only increases the more that cloud servers are rammed with storage.

While it might not seem like it'll make a difference, deleting emails relieves stress on these cloud servers, meaning they don't need to work as hard to keep the data online and therefore consume less power as a result.

One single email doesn't take up that much space, but when you multiply this by one thousand, or even tens of thousands in some extreme cases, it all starts to add up.

Most email providers don't make it easy to delete your emails en masse unfortunately, but if you can clear out a significant chunk of your inbox then it'll definitely make a difference.