HOW A QUICK SNOOZE CAN SAVE THE PLANET
An extremely sesitive and well written article from Down Under. Well worth a read.
COMPUTERS are bad. No sooner have they flung open the doors of our homes to rampaging hordes of Nigerian conmen and Viagra salesmen than they are on the scrap heap because they were obsolete by the time you had prised the staples off the box.
Naturally, to reduce a computer’s footprint, Dilemmas readers will bend these staples back into shape using only their teeth and reinsert into an appropriate staple gun. However, we can go further. Firstly, by choosing a laptop. They use as little as 12 per cent of the energy of a desktop.
A laptop will use 20 to 50 watts, says Paul Osmond, manager of the Environment Unit at the University of NSW. A desktop with an old-style cathode ray tube monitor will draw 120 to 170 watts and a desktop with an LCD screen 65 to 100 watts.
Sleep is crucial. The energy use of a desktop with an LCD can drop to seven watts in sleep mode.
Most modern computers are set up to go to sleep after 15 to 20 minutes of inactivity. By changing the power-saving options that can be reduced to a couple of minutes. (In Windows go to Start-Control Panel-Power Options; on a Mac go to System Preferences-Energy Saver.) After all, if you nod off while reading Dilemmas online, it seems only fair your hard drive should get a snooze too.
If your monitor starts showing pictures of fish or psychedelic whirly things, it is not helping. “Screen savers save pixels, not energy,” Osmond says.
Choose a smaller monitor size and dim your screen’s brightness settings to further reduce the guzzling.
Computers are on their best behaviour when switched off and, contrary to popular belief, shutting down does not harm them. They use only a couple of watts if turned off on the box and nothing if switched off at the wall.
Shutting down at home is one thing; getting everyone at work to do it is another.
“Audit data from a number of countries indicates that up to half of office computers are typically left on all night, with close to half left on all weekend,” Osmond says.
Maybe your IT department could set up some system that shuts down everything automatically.
Where do computers go when they die? Worldwide, e-waste (unwanted electronic equipment) weighs in at about 40 million tonnes a year, the United Nations says. Much of that ends up in toxic heaps in Asia and Africa, where children scavenge scrap metal.
That equipment has often been given up in good faith for recycling in the West or as a donation to Third World schools.
Greenpeace is campaigning for an end to what it calls “poisoning the poor”. It wants companies to stop using dangerous chemicals in the manufacture of computers and to take responsibility for the life cycle of their gizmos by introducing global recycling programs.
It rates manufacturers in its annual Guide to Greener Electronics. The 2008 edition puts Nokia, Samsung and Fujitsu top of the charts, with Sharp, Microsoft and the woeful Nintendo (rated zero on most criteria) at the bottom.
Lists of companies that recycle computer equipment can be found at the Total Environment Centre website www.tec.org.au and the Planet Ark website www.recyclingnearyou.com.au.
Some charge and some do not, though residents of most metropolitan areas should have access to at least one free recycler, says the media manager of Planet Ark, Karen Billington. It is worth checking what they are going to do with your machine. “Most companies should explain their recycling process openly on their website,” Billington says. “If in doubt, make a phone call and ask whether the components will stay in Australia or go overseas.”
Simon Webster
The Sidney Morning Herald
