Like physical waste and trash, unwanted and unused data also pollutes the digital environment by degrading the performance and capacity of storage systems and requiring costly disposal.

The demonstration used only one particle at a time, but if the particles were used for digital storage, they would increase the capacity and require a tenth of the power of current systems like DVD's.

There is not enough bandwidth or data-centre capacity to keep up with demand, says Kaiser Kuo, director for digital strategy at Ogilvy China, an advertising agency.