Green living and sustainable households and workplaces are very achievable concepts. Doing a little bit for the environment is not as hard as it may seem, and there are many other things homes and offices can do besides separate rubbish removal in order to reduce their carbon footprint. Here are some simple but effective ways to do this, courtesy of Cambridge University, UK.
Chargers
Mobile phone chargers, laptop and device docking stations, as well as various printers/scanners/copiers use electricity regardless of whether they are working or not. As long as the plug is in the socket many of these devices will consume some energy as the power plug contains a part called voltage transformer which drains power constantly. Unplug when not in use!
A mere 5% of power used by the average mobile phone charger is actually used for charging the phone’s battery. The other 95% of power are wasted when the charger is left plugged in.
Computers
- Reducing computer monitor brightness from 100% to 70% saves up to 20 percent of the overall amount of energy the monitor uses.
- A computer monitor left on overnight, can drain as much electricity as it takes to laser print 500 pages;
- Leaving a computer screen turned on overnight will create enough CO2 emissions to fill up a double decker bus;
- Three LCD computers monitors can be run effectively on the power consumed by one of the old CRT monitors;
One third of all power consumed by a desktop computer is used by the monitor.
Energy consumed by computers left on standby accounts for 10% of all electricity consumed in residential homes, or 1% of the world’s CO2 emissions.
Screensavers do not save energy.
Photocopiers and printers
- If the average printer or photocopier is left running overnight, 365 times, it will generate the same amount of CO2 as driving from Cambridge to Paris and back again;
- If the average printer or photocopier was left running for a whole working day, but it was actually used only for 20% of the time, it would generate about 350 pounds in electricity bills;
Turning off printers and photocopiers overnight will save enough electricity to power a large size flat panel TV and a fridge at once, for the same amount of time.
A photocopier left on overnight uses as much electricity as it takes to copy fifteen hundred A4 pages.
Save electricity by using printers and photocopiers using a low melting point toner. Such devices are 40% more efficient in terms of power consumed and warm up time.
Kettles
Kettles are powerful electrical appliances – heating up a litre of water from fridge temperature to boiling point takes a decent amount of watts. If every person in Britain heated up only as much water as they needed each time i.e. 500ml for 2 cups of tea, instead of 1200ml for one year, the electricity saved would be enough to power all streetlights in the UK for seven months. If the same was done by Cambridge University Staff, the institution would save 80 thousand pounds in electricity bills every year.