Reduce memory on suspend by removing mesh-renderers?

I was wondering if the post title would be a viable approach for reducing my app's memory footprint when it's suspended (minimized). Due to script referencing (and other more complicated) issues, I can't fully destroy/instiante gameobjects in my scene when the app is suspended/resumed.

Does anyone know if removing the mesh-renderer will free up most of the memory used by a gameobject? For example, if I have a gameobject with a mesh renderer that's displaying a car mesh with an associated material/texture, and I remove the mesh-renderer, would that reduce that gameobject's size in memory to a minimum?... I'd check myself with the profiler, but I don't have unity pro :/

Thanks in advance!

 

Xcode profilers shows App memory usage, and you can remove the parts during runtime to see if something happens.