7 Ways to Go Green with Your Technology ...

This is probably one of the most commonly quoted ways to go green with your technology. There are even messages on the bottom of emails asking if you need to print this off. Do you know that there are still some offices that print their emails? In a world where snail mail is considered too slow and the fax machine is antiquated, there are people who are still printing emails. It is like driving your car to the stable so you can attach horses to your car to pull you around town.

If you can then you should. The packaging often lets you know if you can recycle them, and there are even companies that pay you to recycle them. They are easy to recycle and it is pretty dumb not to if you think about it.

Many companies do something like this, and the reason is so corporate mentality that it makes your nose bleed. It turns out that the time wasted for staff turning on their computers and the associated procrastination will cost a company more than leaving the computers on all night. That must also mean it will cost more even if they just have one guy come in early every morning and switch them on for the other staff members. As a personal user though, there’s no reasonable excuse to leave your computer on all night. Just like there’s no need to continue charging any device once the battery is full.

Your processors are burning energy, so one of the ways to go green with your technology is to make it more efficient. Computers work better in lower temperatures and become less efficient as they heat up. Keep your computer and your servers cool and you get a more energy efficient office. If you’re a home user, do not use your computer next to a radiator and always make sure there is good air circulation and the fan isn’t impeded in any way.

The air blowing ones are a wasteful use of canned goods. There is no justification for having pressured air keyboard cleaners. It is better to apply a small brush attachment to a vacuum nozzle, turn the board upside down and vacuum out the gunk. The worst type of people will throw away a keyboard once it has become dirty in the cracks. If that is the case, then buy a keyboard with really small spaces between each key. Even if this costs you twice as much as buying a regular keyboard, it is still going to cost you less in the long run.

It is easier to make energy burning electronics. It takes a lot of skill to make energy efficient devices, which is often why they cost more to buy. But, you can make your money back and then save more money if you use an energy efficient device. It also has the nice benefit of helping to slow the destruction of the planet. The biggest argument for energy efficient technology is the fact that power is costing more and more, which means energy efficient devices are paying for themselves faster and faster. As energy prices shoot up you see how saving a few pennies every month starts turning into folding money as power prices rise.

Europe has some very restrictive laws on toxic metals in computers and such, which have spread to places such as Japan and other big electronics companies. They have to remove the toxic chemicals in computers or better still they have to create them without the chemicals in the first place. The next time you need to buy a new device, check out EPEAT ratings to see which computers and electrical equipment are easy to recycle and have the fewest toxic substances in them.

As you can see, it’s not rocket science. Even thinking about ways to go green with your technology is a step forward in the fight to safeguard our precious environment. Is green technology something you care about?