With the increase in environmental awareness, you may be wondering whether you can do anything with your computer to help cut down your environmental footprint. The answer is yes, though as is so often the case, there are pros and cons to a number of the things you could do.
It sounds obvious, but a lot of people don't turn their computer off when they go home at night, for the weekend, or on vacation. They just let it go into sleep mode. It's true that sleep mode uses much less power than the computer uses when it's in full operation, but it still uses more power than if the computer is turned right off. If your computer is turned on and yet it's not in use, it's consuming energy and doing no productive work at all; this, by definition, is a waste.
The same thing applies to monitors (for desktops and servers, or if you use an external monitor with your laptop). If the computer is turned off, in sleep mode, or disconnected, the monitor will typically go into sleep mode - and, just as a computer in sleep mode uses more power than a computer that's actually turned off, the same is true of monitors. In many offices, you could walk around outside of business hours and find that a large percentage of monitors are turned on, even if the computers themselves are turned off.
Printers and other peripheral devices are the same: if you're not using it, turn it right off.
Even when turned off, many devices still use some power. Many computers, for instance, have a feature called wake-on-LAN, in which the computer can be turned on by a special packet on the network. Many printers, even when turned off, can turn themselves back on if they detect that you're trying to print to them. Media centre computers can often be turned on via an infrared remote control (like the one you'd use to turn your TV on). In order for any of these features to work, some part of the computer has to be drawing power, or else it would never be able to detect whatever it is that turns it on. Also, many power supplies, including virtually all power bricks (power supplies which are connected via a cable to the devices they power), consume some power even when the device is turned off.
This power draw is called phantom load; some sources suggest it accounts for 5-10% of all electricity consumed in a typical home, and it's not unreasonable to believe that phantom loads are also a significant portion of electricity use in an office environment. Again, if a device is drawing power but not actually doing anything useful, that's a waste.
A power bar with a switch, or a power bar that you physically unplug from the outlet at the end of the day, will fix this. Make sure you shut down your computer and peripherals normally first; Windows and other modern operating systems keep data in memory and must be shut down cleanly to avoid corruption, and the manuals for some peripherals also warn that they should be shut off via their power switch. Once all your devices are cleanly shut down, turn off or unplug the power bar.
During a normal working day, it's not unusual for a computer to be used sporadically. You might take a lunch or coffee break, or attend a meeting. It doesn't make a lot of sense to shut your computer right off for a relatively brief interruption like this, but it also doesn't make sense for your computer to be left fully running when you know nobody will be doing any work with it.
You can usually adjust the power settings within the operating system so that the computer will monitor usage of devices such as the hard drive and put them into sleep mode if they haven't been used in some number of minutes, and if the whole computer hasn't been used for a certain period of time, the computer will go into sleep mode. You can typically set how long these timeouts are. The shorter you make them, the less energy will be wasted by unused devices before they are put into sleep mode. But there are a couple of possible downsides: it may take a few moments for them to wake up again when you do need them, and there is an argument that can be made (particularly for hard drives) that there is a significant amount of stress caused each time they're started. The former is, in most cases, no more than a mild inconvenience. The latter is a matter of ongoing debate; while these devices are certainly designed with the knowledge that they will be turned on and off repeatedly throughout their lifetime, it's very difficult to find any definitive information on this.
If you want to put your computer into sleep mode immediately rather than walking away and leaving it to time out, there is often a way to do it. Whether any of these work, and exactly what they do, may vary from computer to computer, and may also depend on what power settings you've chosen:
On average, a CRT (the old tube-type monitor) uses significantly more energy than an LCD (flat-panel monitor) of the same size. In many cases, a CRT consumes 2-3 times as much energy. Most monitors purchased with new computers in the last couple of years have been LCDs, but you may still have some older CRTs in use. Replacing them with LCDs will save energy. Disposal of old CRTs, though, is a problem, as discussed in the next section.
When you replace an old computer or other electronic device, how do you dispose of it? Electronic waste is a big problem; not only is a large volume of electronic equipment thrown out every year, but much of it potentially qualifies as hazardous waste. Many electronic devices are treated with toxic flame retardants, which improve safety during the device's useful lifetime but pollute the environment after disposal. CRTs often contain a number of toxic chemicals including lead.
The well-known Three Rs can be a good guide. The most important of the three is Reduce: if you don't need something, don't get it. But sooner or later, any computer will fail, or perhaps you need to run software which simply does not work on an older computer. So we move on to the second R: Re-use. If one of your power users needs a newer machine, can their old machine be given to another user? Or perhaps a local school or charity can make use of it. If the device is no longer usable at all, there are electronics recycling companies which will strip it, removing parts which can be reused or recycled, and dispose of the useless parts in a responsible fashion.
The Wikipedia article on electronic waste (linked to above) has more information on the problem in general. The City of Toronto has a Web page with information on disposing of old computers, although it is aimed at consumers rather than businesses. Microsoft Canada has this page of information on disposing of electronic waste in Toronto, including several links to organizations which accept computers.
Many offices generate a lot of paper waste. Some of it is legitimate, but some of it is also unnecessary. Some things to think about:
Information technology accounts for a significant part of the environmental impact of a typical office, but there are many things outside the IT realm which also need to be considered when thinking green. Many of them are the same things that a conscientious person would do at home: recycling cans and bottles in the lunch room, turning off desk lamps and radios when not needed, turning off room lights when you leave (if there are accessible switches for this, which is a problem in many offices), and so on.
Back to list of newsletters