“Going green” is certainly the rage nowadays. We see it everywhere we look. And this is a good thing. College campuses are the perfect setting for instilling “green” initiatives. College students seem to always be looking for a “cause” and this is certainly one worthy of sustaining. The University of Mississippi “Red, Blue, and Green” campaign has really gained momentum and seems to be making progress in the environmental campaign.However, I decided to take a walk through the “valley” of University offices, just to see how we are doing. Here are a few of the “ungreen” activities I observed.
Only 2 of the 12 offices I visited had “waste paper” recycling bins that I could see. They may have been in a back office, but how many people are going to make the effort of walking to another office to recycle their discarded paper when the trash can is right under or beside their desk?
EVERY office I visited had computers turned on that were not in use and no one seated at the computer. Each of these computers had screen savers running.
Of the 12 offices I visited, most were using LCD monitors. However, there were 8 CRT monitors among those that were left on and not being used. Newer monitors are more energy efficient than older monitors. New CRT monitors require less energy than older CRT monitors of equivalent size. However, LCD monitors require much less energy than CRT monitors. Not to mention how much friendlier they are to the eye!
Here are a few items to consider:
After lighting, computers and monitors have the highest energy consumption in office environments. Simply turning them off at night or during long periods of unused time can save hundreds or thousands of dollars a year on electricity costs.
In a typical “9 to 5” office, computers are used for less than 25% of the week. Ensuring computers are turned off at night reduces their running time by 75%. This represents an opportunity to make significant savings on energy consumption and electricity costs.
According to Cornell University’s website, a typical workstation consists of energy eating devices such as a computer, monitor, and any number of peripherals. A typical example might include a Dell Optiplex GX280 desktop, Dell 17" CRT monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers and a scanner. Such a configuration when left turned on and idle, would consume 150 watts per hour or 3.6kWhrs every day or $1,143 per year. I don’t know exactly how many such configurations like this are on the University of Mississippi campus, but the cost for every 100 such configurations would be $114,300.00 per year. And this is if the system is left idle!
Bottom line, we all need to be more conscious about turning off our computers at night or anytime they are not in use for an extended period of time. Additionally, we need to discourage the use of screensavers, and simply turn off our monitors when not in use. As for printers, speakers, scanners, and other peripherals, these devices should also be turned off when not in use.
I found this information from the Cornell website really put it into perspective for me.
These days with power consumption and costs on the rise, saving energy is becoming a larger issue. There are a multitude of ways to save energy by adjusting settings on PCs, printers, and peripherals. Looking at computers, you can see the difference between leaving it on all the time compared to turning it off at the end of the day. It would take the work of close to 500 trees to counteract the effect of leaving one computer on all the time. Compare this to only 70 trees for a computer that was turned off at the end of the day, weekends and lunch hours.
The entire article can be viewed at: http://computing.fs.cornell.edu/Sustainable/FSSustainableComputingGuide.pdf
Most of us are pretty good at turning off the light when we leave a room. Why not just turn off that computer on your way out?
The following link is a fun video about "Going Green." Talks about "walking the walk" when going green. We can't just talk about it, we have to do it!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hPcPEeB_Ok
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