Staying Green with technology
With all this talk nowadays about going Green and protecting the environment it is not uncommon for people to find themselves asking the question: How exactly do I go green with my business?
The answer varies and can be difficult to accomplish but it is certainly not impossible.
In the subject of computers the green issue is significantly complex. Computers have toxic materials in them and also draw a lot of energy to operate. You can approach the issue with a grain of salt by first considering what your technology infrastructure consists of.
If you have desktops then the first thing to do is work withing the operating system. Windows, Linux, and Mac OS have power management utilities that tell the system how it should handle the power. Try some of the following:
Turn on screen saver for monitor.
Turn on auto-off feature for monitor if it sits idle for longer than 5 minutes.
Turn on Hibernate for the system after 20 minutes of idle time.
Enable the power down of your computer devices after being idle for a certain period of time. The ethernet port can do this, so can many other devices that draw consistent power. All of these settings can be found under the Device Manager in both XP and Vista.
Shut down your machine when you leave the office whether its a home office or at work. This can reduce the total amount of power drawn for a month and over the period of a year the cost savings and green points can be staggering.
Buy Green Products! Many manufacturers have begun to take notice that the green solution to IT isn’t only a good business choice to sell more products but also a great way to promote savings for their customers. Companies like AMD emphasize the important of going green and they continually develop new processors that perform at incredible speeds but use very low electrical voltage. This achievement is truly astonishing for chip makers and I’d recommend AMDs processors over Intel any day.
Green hard drives, green power supplies, green fans are becoming more and more common and they aren’t just gimmick names… they can really save you a lot of money in the end.
Laptops are also a great way to save money… if used properly a laptop can significantly reduce the energy footprint of your company because they feature batteries. The correct way to use a laptop is to charge it till the battery is full, use it with battery only until the battery is depleted, charge it again from an outlet and repeat. If you follow this cycle you are doing many good things at once. The most obvious fact is that you’re drawing less power by not being plugged in all the time. The other thing to consider is that batteries tend to last longer and hold their charge longer if they’re allowed to drain their charge before being recharged. This means that it is much better for a better to be fully charged and allowed to reach its depleted level than to charge it midway because this can reduce the life of the cells inside the battery. Another good thing about following the laptop charging cycle is that you allow the internal power management programs in your laptop to properly handle the electrical voltage of the system. If you’re only listening to a song and are relaxing the system can automatically turn the voltage down a notch or two and can adjust accordingly so you don’t waste extra energy for no reason.
These are some of the ways you can save money while staying green. For more info you can also refer to our cinchGREEN service for disposal and consultation on just how to become a green business.