Are you someone who uses a lot of technology at work and have always wondered how to go green at the office? Here are some simple tips we apply at HP every day. Our founders once said that the secret to success is “choosing the right things to do.” I hope that you’ll choose to use and apply some of these immediately. Together, we can succeed in making our environment better.
1. Be an all star
Opt for or ask for ENERGY STAR–qualified products, such as Personal Computers (PCs), peripherals, phones and compact fluorescent light bulbs. Or at the very least start the conversation with your office managers on such products. Click here if you are interested in learning more about ENERGY STAR as well as some compliant HP products.
2. Size and energy matters
Consider using laptops, flat-panel monitors and multifunction printing products. They use less energy and are made with less material than desktop PCs, CRT monitors and multiple printing and imaging products.
3. Don’t use screen savers
Screen savers don’t save energy; they actually use more energy than no screen saver at all. Instead, choose PC sleep settings when you’re away from your PC.
4. Print smart and green
You can set your printer to print on both sides to help reduce paper waste. And remember to print on paper with recycled content. Or better yet, print only when you need to.
5. Shut it off
Switch off electronics and lights when not in use. It’s basic but we all need a reminder from time to time.
6. Pull the plug
Plugged-in electronics still use energy even when switched off. Try this to help conserve energy use: Plug all electronics into a power strip or power surge protector and turn the power strip off when devices are not in use.
7. Be a planet partner
You can reduce environmental impact by recycling your used print cartridges in recycling bins. Click here if you wish to participate in HP’s product recycling services in your respective country.
8. Give it away
Donate or recycle unused and unwanted computer equipment including cables, mice and keyboards.
9. Plant it
Place indoor plants in your office. They look nice and plants can improve your indoor air quality by absorbing pollutants.
Hope this helps!
~Kevin
Tags: energy star, environment, green, green office, green technology, green tips, HP, HP product recycling, plants, print
Regarding nine tips:
Most electronics has little or no value as a donation especially since it does not work anymore. Recycling centers are extremely picky about what material they will take and provide recycling only on certain days of the year. The result is unwanted equipment stored and taking up space that is valuable for other purposes. Trashing it is very cheap and saves resources.
1) I use my own company’s equipment that I helped to design for energy efficiency to save money and resources for the company.
2) I’ve used laptops and they are highly unreliable when moved from the desktop to meetings and back causing a lot of wasted time in reboots and dealing with crashed software.
3) I blank the screen. Turn off monitor and disks. Sleep states frequently crash the computer requiring a reboot. One reboot a day consumes the people rsource - me - that costs twice as much as the savings in energy if the computer were turned off for 24 hours. I come back to the computer many times a day. So I am optimizing the use of resouces by not using sleep.
4) Printing “smart” almost always wastes more paper than it saves. On smaller printers the paper has to be taken out, rotated and flipped. Many times this process is so complicated and variable from one print situation to another that the docments are out of order or upside down and must be thrown away and tried agian. On larger group printers sometimes the features are improperly set up sometimes messing up large documents that must then be thrown away. Since the feeders are moving paper in irregular ways they often jam consuming time and paper. Ten minutes of time can pay for an awful lot of paper.
5) Yes, saves money for the company. The overhead lights in our building however stay on 24 hours a day. In our old building they were on timers and shut off at night. You could override the shut off in 2 hour increments if you were working late. Can’t seem to get my company to fix this one.
6) I have many of these plugs in strips under desk. It takes a couple minutes to unplug (the right one mind you) and plug one of these each day. The two minutes is worth 100 times the cost of electricity if the device were unplugged for 24 hours. This would be a waste of my company’s resources.
7) I send in cartriges in the recycle envelope. I have no figures on the costs of this process but just the idea of shipping it across the country for recycling brings visions of fuel and people resources consumed to transport it.
9) I have plants in the office and I love them. they provide about one breath of oxygen per year.
Great ideas, many of which we implement at home.
However, regarding turning off my primary workstation at work, I would gladly do that if there were a means of remotely turning it on again. We who work at home or must answer customer escalations at any time need access to the intranet and lab systems.
I previously suggested a centralized wake-on-lan facility, but it was never implemented.
I would encourage you to once again discuss the wake-on-lan facility with your management team. Sometimes it takes persistence to convince people to make a change.
[...] Choose proven power savers As mentioned in this post, it is always good to opt for ENERGY STAR–qualified computers (Desktop PCs, Notebooks, [...]
Hi Kevin, great tips. I would also add that you can use your own cups rather than disposable cups and start a carpool for getting to and from work