Green IT Tips

Everyone loves their tech and very few would want to give it up. However in the world that we live in more and more people are becoming green, or more environmentally friendly. So we need to find ways that we can still enjoy our tech but still take care of the planet at the same time. Luckily for you I have developed a list of some green IT tips to help you in that endeavor.

• Ditch the printer. Back in the 1970’s people started tossing around the idea of the paperless office. We still aren’t anywhere near there. When you are at home or in the office think before you hit print, that paper comes from trees. Even if it recycled it still requires power and bleach to get nice white paper. Also whenever possible power off your printer, maybe people forget and across the planet printers sit, powered up and ready, awaiting print jobs and sucking down power.


• Sleep, don’t screen save. There was a time when the screen save would be very useful to stop a static image from being burned into the screen of your computer. The thing is that modern computer monitors don’t suffer from this issue. Also that screen saver takes up quite large chunk of power to show off those simple graphics. They can even override any energy saving settings you have set up. A better choice is to set computers to sleep instead.


• Turn it off. Think about the times you aren’t using electronics, like when you are asleep. Both home and office computers will benefit from being turned off when they are not in use. The time frames might be different, but when heading off to work turn off that home computer and at the end of the work day turn off your home computer. You’ll be saving a good chunk over leaving both sit on all day. However sometimes turning it off will still cause a piece of electronics to draw energy, it might be a better choice to unplug as well.>
• Think of power when you buy. There are these amazing stickers that they put on energy efficient electronics now a days. Buying those Energy Star appliances means that there is at least a setting on the device that is set up to save power.


• Reuse and stretch the life. A lot of technology has various metals inside that aren’t exactly easy to recycle and are a definite no-no for landfills. The first step is to stretch out the useful life of your technology. For example, if your phone works fine do you really need to replace it every year because a slightly newer model has come out? Also if you do replace it, is there another way to use that old tech instead of just tossing it out?


• Down size your use. Think about ways you can use less energy. Do you have a bunch of lights that are left on all day and night (server rooms have this quite often). You could turn them off or install motion sensing lighting. Is it possible to raise or lower the temperature in the building to save some more energy?