January Declutter Month - Building Engagement While Fighting Waste

At KnowBe4, we continuously look for innovative ways to reduce waste, not only at work, but on a personal level as well. What started as a simple idea five years ago has now become a highly anticipated annual tradition that combines physical decluttering with a growing focus on our digital carbon footprint.

This year, we combined our 5th annual 'Drop & Swap' with our digital waste reduction initiative, to create January Declutter month.

2026 Highlights

• → 2026 avoided emissions from Digital Declutter saw a 132% increase over last year.

• → Participation also increased by 194% this year, nearly tripling our impact from 2025.

• → Five-year Drop & Swap US charity impact: Over 1,068 pounds donated to local charities – roughly the weight of a grand piano or 4-5 refrigerators going to families in need.

• → Donations to charity increased 25% this year over last.

Five-Year Drop & Swap Combined Impact in the US

• → Total items shared: Over 1,400 pounds
• → Total donated to charity: 1,068 pounds
• → Total shoes recycled: 60 pounds
• → Lives touched: Countless Knowsters plus local families through charity donations
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Digital Decluttering Drives Real Impact

While we often associate pollution with physical waste like plastic in our oceans or overflowing landfills, digital pollution is a rapidly growing environmental threat that exists quietly on our servers and devices. Every forgotten email, unused app, and redundant file requires energy-intensive data centers and physical infrastructure to maintain, contributing significantly to global carbon emissions.

Beyond the environmental footprint, digital clutter directly impacts our productivity and mental well-being by creating unnecessary "noise" and stress. So by participating in digital cleanups, we aren't just organizing our screens; we are actively reducing energy consumption, strengthening data security, and ensuring that our shared digital environment remains a sustainable resource for the future.

• Dark Data: Roughly 85% of stored organizational data is "dark data," (data stored but not used) generating 5.8 mtCO2e annually—the same as 1.2 million cars.
• Storage Costs: Storing just 4 GB of data for one year produces 1 kg of CO2e, while a single email with a large attachment can generate up to 50g of CO2e.
• Energy Demand: By 2026, global data center electricity consumption could reach 1,050 TWh, which is roughly equal to the total energy demand of Japan.
• Water Usage: Large data centers can use 5 million gallons of water daily for cooling, equivalent to the water needs of a town with up to 50,000 people.

For the digital declutter initiative, people tracked how many emails, pictures, videos, and documents they deleted for a chance to win prizes. Over the course of one month, 182 people from the US, India, South Africa, Singapore, UK, Brazil, Japan, Germany, UAE, Netherlands, and Australia participated (that’s every country where we have offices!), and avoided 3.87 metric tons of CO2e total.

{3.87 mtCO2e}

To put that in perspective, it’s equivalent to the emissions from two round-trip transatlantic flights; burning roughly 435 gallons of gasoline; or recycling nearly one full ton of paper. Put another way, it would take approximately 176 mature trees an entire year to absorb that same amount of CO2.

Physical Drop & Swap Continues to Flourish

Why This Matters

According to the Zero Waste International Alliance, zero waste means "the conservation of all resources by means of responsible production, consumption, reuse, and recovery of products, packaging, and materials without burning and with no discharges to land, water, or air that threaten the environment or human health."

KnowBe4's annual Drop & Swap embraces the 'reuse' aspect of this definition, keeping materials in circulation rather than sending them to landfills where they generate methane and other harmful emissions.

Drop & Swap isn't just reducing waste – it's building community and spreading generosity while addressing both our physical and digital environmental impact.