Nigel’s 5 tips for greener computing

After a slow start, the issue of greener computing is beginning to gather momentum. There’s a growing consensus that the way the computer industry has grown is unsustainable. This pretty solid, if rather dry, article appeared on the BBC’s news site last weekend:

Vapour trails across the sky makes pollution from planes highly visible. Not so the pollution from the computer industry.

Yet the information and communications technology industry - or ICT - is responsible for the same amount of carbon dioxide emissions as those from planes.

See, for all the sleekness of their exteriors, computers are notoriously clunky in their energy use. Not only do they use energy directly to power processors and often very inefficient screens, but they’re often so designed to require huge amounts of extra power to cool them down, and that’s not to mention the fact that it takes a huge amount of energy - and raw materials - to produce each PC in the first place.

Rising energy prices are going to mean that companies are going to start looking to make big cuts in their electricity uses. Some analysts believe that this is a chance for manufacturers with more efficient machines to steal a march on their watt-hungry rivals.

But a lot of us are stuck with the older gear that we have for now, so here are Nigel’s five tips to use your computer in a less profligate way:

ONE Turn if off. Obviously. One study estimates that the cost of leaving computers on all night in the UK contributes 200,000 tonnes of carbon every year to our emissions - equivalent to 120,000 4×4s. And when you’re leaving it on, you should check the sleep-mode settings are optimal. Go to the Windows Power Options in PCs, or Energy Saver in Macs and tweak your settings. For PC users also there’s a clever device called the EcoButton which you press to put your computer instantly into energy-saving mode whenever you’re on the phone, or going for a coffee break. New simple energy-saving devices are appearing by the day. With the One Click Power Mains Panel you can power all your peripherals automatically when you switch off your computer.

TWO Don’t print out unless you need to. Yes, I know this is getting harder. Companies are switching so many of us to online billing and we still need a hard record, but paperless is the way to go. Take the time to try switching to double-sided printing. Avoid printing pages you don’t need. And when you do, use recycled paper. Which takes me to:

THREE Try recycled ink cartridges. There are loads available. Oh, and to save ink, set print quality to “Draft” whenever you’re just printing out documents. Printers are so good these days the quality’s good enough for most purposes - and it’s quicker too.

FOUR Go for the lean burn. Try and burn to CDs and DVDs as little as you need to. Try and use the whole 700MB of memory; don’t just burn to move a tiny piece of information from hard drive X to hard drive Y.

FIVE Recycle. Many charities like Actionaid are now making money from a lot of the things we’d usually throw away, from ink cartridges to laptops - and if you’re in the right place they’ll even collect. Most computer outlets will now take computer equipment back for recycling, and, after a lot of pressure from consumers last year, Apple finally set up a new policy on this. You also can post used CDs and their cases to Polymer Recycling.

Pass them on. Any tips of your own, kindly pass them on to me too. Ta.

Thanks to G. P. Macklin for the pic at the top

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This entry was written by Nigel and posted on Monday, May 12th, 2008 at 1:44 pm and filed under Greener computers, Nigel's five tips, Energy saving tips, Eco products, Co2 emissions, Carbon footprints. Bookmark the permalink. You can follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment, or trackback from your own site.

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