Sustainable Home Computing

Keep Your Home Computing Green

As a soon to be married guy, my fiancé and I try to cut down on waste any way we can. We try as hard as we can to live a sustainable lifestyle. I’m sure we could do better, but every little bit counts. We recycle, we get our food from a CSA, and use reusable shopping bags, and we walk as often as the distance and weather allow wherever we need to go. I spend a lot of time on the computer at home, so I try to follow these rules to keep my home computing green.

First and foremost, shut it down when you aren’t using it. There are bunch of people out there who just leave their computers on all day long. There are so many benefits to shutting these things down. I don’t know about you but I feel the heat coming off of my laptop as we speak. In the summer time, all of these little pieces of technology running all day not only consumes power just by being on, the heat they generate can increases the amount of time your AC runs to keep your house cool. With the last few summers filled with beleaguering heat waves, the AC units all over my neighborhood are screaming their condensing little hearts out trying to keep us cool, all the while sucking pennies out of your pockets and burning up all of our natural resources. This goes for Laptops, PC’s, Monitors, Printers, phone chargers, TV’s and game consoles too.

Print Both Sides. Rough drafts for school projects and papers, coloring pages for the little ones, that novel you’ve been working on when your wife is asleep, Google Maps® directions because your GPS on your cell phone stinks. All of these things can be printed double sided. Don’t waste costly ink and paper on something that is going to just get thrown out or destroyed. Make a re-usable paper pile on top of your new paper and use that one first if you can.

Refill Your Printer Cartridges. There are a few products out there that you can use to refill your printer cartridges. Some of them are tricky, but once you get the hang of it, you’ll save a bundle on printer ink and stop all that plastic and heavy metals from entering our nations overflowing landfills.

Maintain your computers. Okay, I know it’s probably pretty small in comparison to some of the other items on my list. But the logic is sound. A few little’s make a whole lot. All of those running processes on your computer cause your computer to use more electricity. When your computer is infected with malware or a virus, there are usually background processes utilizing your computer’s hardware to

Last but not least, this one is my personal favorite…

Get outside! Leave your house! Get some fresh air and a little exercise. Go take a walk with your kids, or just ride your bike around the block. Get away from the internet for a while. I promise, we’ll all be here blogging and twittering ourselves blind as soon as you get back. I’m willing to bet the videos of those Canadian fellas turning gluttonous portions of bacon and meats into YouTube gold will be here when you get back. Go rediscover the place you live. I bet it’s a lot nicer than you think. If not, move. America is pretty awesome when you know where to look.