Analog camera company Polaroid has taken aim at data center water usage in a new advertising campaign.. The company is also running ads about generative AI and getting people off their phones.. – Polaroid. “Go jump in some water before the data centers drink it all up,” one billboard design states.
It is running at Coney Island beach in the US; the King’s Cross, Bethnal Green, and Hackney tube stations in the UK; and in South Korea. The campaign also extends to social media.. “While our campaigns are provocative and challenge our relationship with technology, we’re not anti-digital.
We know we have to live alongside it, but we’re deeply pro-human, and know what humanity gives us. And we know what we stand to lose if we don’t protect it. That’s a fight worth fighting,” said Patricia Varella, creative director at Polaroid.. “For Polaroid, the simple act of existing is already an act of rebellion.”.
The ad campaign taps into a broader anti-data center movement, with AI facility water usage one of the key concerns touted by protesters and locals.. The reality is much less dramatic and more nuanced. Some facilities do indeed use evaporative cooling, which can use a relatively large amount of water, but modern AI facilities increasingly turn to closed-loop systems that dramatically reduce consumption..
Lawrence Berkeley National Lab found that data centers consumed around 17.4 billion gallons of water in 2023, which sounds substantial in isolation, but is less than the 200bn used for swimming pools or 476bn for golf courses.. For closed-loop systems, Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella this month claimed that a data center’s water usage was roughly equivalent to that of a single restaurant.
Also this month, AWS said that its global data centers consumed 2.5 billion gallons of water in 2025.. This week, Nvidia said that its latest DSX reference design has zero water consumption. “With dry-cooler-based designs, it’s a closed-loop system with no evaporative water cooling – outside of maybe one percent of the year when we might need chillers in some climates,” Ali Heydari, director of data center cooling and infrastructure at Nvidia, said..
The anti-data center movement – which also has concerns about air quality, tax breaks, job losses, and power costs – has successfully led to data center moratoria in towns and cities across the US.. According to a Gallup poll of 1,000 interviewees conducted this March, the most cited reason for having an anti-data center view – mentioned by 50 percent of respondents – was the effect on resources..
21 Apr 2026
