What does environmentally-friendly computer use have to do with baby otters? Keep reading and you’ll find out.
In recent years, there have been two trends: Increasing purchases and usage of computers and gadgets, and increasing environmental awareness and action. Apply the latter to the former and you get the rise of green computing.
“Green computing? Is that to imply that my current computing is… not green?” As beneficial as technology is today, it also damages the environment during the three phases of its existence: Manufacturing, usage, and disposal. There are two primary aspects of environmental damage that consumers and businesses are focusing on: The production of greenhouse gases from energy consumption, and toxic air and water pollution from manufacturing and disposal.
How can we help? There are many green decisions we can make beginning from when we’re thinking about getting a new computer until when we’re getting rid of that computer.
Purchasing
When shopping for a new computer, there are a couple signs that basically say “officially green”.
- Look for Energy Star 4.0 compliance
If equipment has the “Energy Star” label, it means it conforms to energy efficiency specifications set by the US EPA. A description from their website states, “Qualified products must now meet energy use guidelines in three distinct operating modes: standby, sleep mode, and while computers are being used. This approach ensures energy savings when a computer is active and performing a range of tasks, as well as when standing by. Newly qualified computers must also include a more efficient internal power supply.” These specifications were updated in 2007 (version 4.0) to be more stringent than past versions.
- Look for RoHS compliance
The RoHS Directive bans the sale in the UK of electronic goods that contain more than agreed levels of certain toxic substances. How does that affect consumers outside the UK? Well, if a manufacturer wants to sell to the UK market, instead of making an RoHS-complaint and an RoHS-non-compliant version of their products, they might as well make just the RoHS-compliant version to sell to the UK and outside. Thus, you’ll be finding RoHS-compliant components in the US thanks to the UK.
You can also prevent the creation of e-waste by obtaining a used computer if you feel the environmental benefits outweigh the drawbacks (such as older technology and no warranty).
Usage
An average computer, including monitor, consumes 100-300 watts. While we can encourage manufacturers to produce greener products, we have much more control over the energy consumption of products through the way we use them. The following chart illustrates this concept.
Ideally, we would power off our computers the moment we stop using them, but we can have a balance between low energy consumption and practicality.
- Configure your computer’s power management settings.
You can set your computer, if it’s not set already, to automatically turn off unused components like the monitor and hard drive after they’ve been idle for a certain time. You can also put the computer on a timer to…
- Suspend, sleep, or hibernate
We might avoid turning off our computers because they take a while to boot back up or we’re reluctant to close our work and have to reopen everything later. Both these obstacles can be reduced or avoided by using the suspend, sleep, or hibernate function on your computer instead of completely powering off. There are some distinctions between the three modes and they still consume a trickle of power, but the bottom line is they consume much less power than the computer being on.
Outside of the environmental impacts, consumers and businesses gain by spending less money on energy.
Disposal
Since electronics often contain toxic metals and substances, it’s often illegal to toss old electronics away with the rest of your trash, where the substances are in danger of polluting water sources. Luckily, we have many other options that are becoming more convenient.
- Donate the equipment if it’s still usable
See if a friend or local non-profit organization or school would like your old computer. You can also lookup thrift shops and donation and recycling sites at www.earth911.org.
- Recycle unusable items
Lookup local recycling centers at www.earth911.org. You can also research if your community organizes e-waste recycling drives/pickup.
- Use manufacturer recycling programs
An increasing number of computer manufacturers now offer ways for you to send your old computer to them for recycling. For example, Dell’s recycling program will recycle any Dell-brand product for free or recycle other-brand products for free with a Dell purchase.
- Recycle dead batteries
Most electronics stores, including cell phone retailers, accept depleted batteries for recycling.
In addition, the decisions of businesses and organizations have a greatly magnified environmental impact because of the sheer number of computers they use. These organizations can help the environment by adopting greener purchasing and disposal procedures and computer use policies, and by educating users.
To sum it up without getting too technical, the answer to my initial question is “nothing”.
