Wednesday, July 04, 2007

Night Shifts Excluded, Of Course...

This was one of the first habits I broke when I started on my path to treehuggerness.

LONDON, June 21, 2007 -- Nearly half of all corporate PCs in the US are not regularly switched off at night, costing US businesses $1.72 billion in energy and causing emissions of 14.4 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, according to recently released PC Energy Awareness report.

The report combines statistics on energy usage and CO2 emissions, alongside research on behavior in the American workplace, such as whether employees are turning their PCs off at the end of the day.
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The data show that American businesses are wasting energy while we sleep. A mid-sized company, which includes about 10,000 PCs, wastes more than $165,000 a year in electricity costs for computers left on overnight. In addition, by turning these computers off, an employer can keep more than 1,381 tons of CO2 out of the atmosphere.

Preventing that amount of CO2 from reaching the atmosphere would have roughly the same impact as taking 2.58 million passenger cars entirely off the road -- more cars than exist in the entire state of Maryland.

Why did I leave my computer on? So I wouldn't have to wait the excruciating 28 seconds or so for it to come back on the following morning. How, oh how, did I ever live through that hell all those years?

Thinking on it now, I used to leave my computer at home on overnight so I wouldn't have to be bothered to wait for it to come in the morning. I might need those 28 seconds for something vital.

Besides, I'd bought into the claim that turning your computer on uses up more energy than leaving it running. I've since read that's innacurate.

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