Climate change has been at the forefront of people’s minds for the past couple of years now. And with the climate strikes/activist and COP26 last year, we’ve found ourselves wondering how we can change things in our daily lives and businesses to live more sustainably.

 

As well as doing what you can at home, it’s important to do what you can within your workplace too. For most people, a computer or laptop are an essential part of our daily lives and we’re often using our devices all day. But there are things that we can do to make our techy lives more eco-friendly, this can be done through Green Computing.

 

What is Green Computing?

Green Computing, also known as Green IT, ICT sustainability or Green Technology, is the study and practice of environmentally sustainable computing or IT. This means that we’re looking at how we can reduce the environmental impact that technology has by reducing waste and energy consumption.

There are many things in which companies and the IT sector can do to be more eco-friendly. Here are some ideas that you and your business can do to reduce your carbon footprint.

-Turn them off when not in use

One simple way to reduce your energy consumption is to cut down on unnecessary energy usage. The average PC uses 100 watts every 8 hours , so turning your tech off instead of leaving it on standby can save a lot of energy.   

-Emails

Another easy way to reduce your carbon footprint is to send fewer emails and delete unwanted emails.

Firstly, sending and receiving emails uses electricity and according to OVO Energy, every email sent releases around about 1g of carbon. So, before you click send think to yourself, ‘do I need to send this?’

Secondly, spam and unwanted emails take up a lot of storage space, which uses energy. So regularly clearing out your spam and deleted folder is an easy fix to start with.

-Your website

Having a website is an essential key to succeeding and spreading brand awareness in this digital world, but there are steps we can take to ensure that our websites use less energy.

For example, did you know that the colours on your website affect the amount of energy used?  Darker colours use less energy, with black being the most energy efficient.

Another thing you can look at is your hosting. You could consider moving to a company that uses energy efficient data centres, or consider switching to cloud hosting with companies that are planet friendly. For more information on this, IONOS has a great article.

-Recycling old IT equipment

Another great way to save waste is to donate or recycle your equipment. If you’re upgrading and your equipment is still usable, why not donate it to a school or a charity. If your equipment is broken and no longer works, don’t just throw it away, recycle it. There are many companies that specialise in recycling old IT, try searching ‘IT recycling near me’.   Some recycling companies require a minimum number of items for free collection, so why not get together with some other local businesses to get a group collection?  We did that recently and got an amazing response from people who just had one or two items themselves and were keen to recycle; so a group collection was ideal.

Conclusion

It's important for us all to do what we can to help the environment. Although we may not be able to change everything, if we all make small changes where we can, these many changes will add up and make a big difference.  

We hope you found this blog useful; next time we’ll be looking at how our own industry of video and film can be more ‘green’ in the future but meanwhile, if you have any tips to share, please let us know.

In our next blog, we will be looking at our own video industry for ways to go green