Commuting
In the Office
In the Break Room
Do Your Part At Work - Part 3 of 5 - Turn It Off!
At the end of a busy day when you're at home sucking on a cold glass of ice tea, your computer is back at the office sucking down energy and increasing your company’s carbon footprint.Simple solution: turn it off!
In fact, according to Energy Star some companies are reaping an energy savings of $75 a year per computer by taking advantage of sleep settings (after 20 minutes of inactivity) and shutting off computers at night. Start multiplying that kind of savings by the number of computers at your business and the savings quickly adds up! Check with your IT department to make sure shutting off your computer doesn’t interfere with any system updates and be sure to ask your IT experts if the company can also shut off group printers, scanners, and copiers when the company is closed. Even if you can’t shut your computer off at night, activate your desktop’s power management settings to reduce the energy it uses when you have stepped away from your desk or take a phone call, rendering your computer inactive. Energy Star estimates you can still save $25-75 a year by taking advantage of sleep or hibernation modes.
Major companies and schools like GE and Yale University have instituted these programs. Yale is savings thousands of dollars a year by having folks shut down their computers at night. GE has saved a whopping $2.5 million a year by instituting power management programs; i.e.: setting employees hibernation or sleep settings. According to Energy Star, that’s the equivalent of planting 5600 acres of forest or preventing 20,000 tons of harmful emissions!
So do your part at work and at the end of the day, give your electronics the night off too!
