If you are looking for a new computer, on which features do you concentrate? Do you look for a lot of memory? A good graphics system? Monitor? Speed? What about how eco-friendly it is?
A lot of toxic waste goes into the environment thanks to computer systems. There are a number of toxic chemicals that go into the manufacture of computers, and of course, there is all of that waste. Once in a landfill, chemicals such as mercury leach out and find their way into the soil and water. And while in use, computers can eat up a lot of electricity.
So what can you do to make sure that you choose the most eco-friendly computer possible? Here are some tips.
Choose a laptop instead of a desktop. Laptops use a lot less energy than do desktop machines. And some of the new netbooks use even less than that. Less is more when it comes to protecting the environment. Cutting down energy usage is always important.
Check out what the government says about eco-friendly computer. It has rated more than 60 different models on how eco-friendly they are. Toshiba and Apple have quite a few laptops (notebook) computers on the gold list. You can see all of the ratings here: http://www.epeat.net/
Which ever model you choose, you can follow a few different practices to make sure that your computer is as green as possible.
One way to do this is to change the settings on your computer’s performance. Laptops have this setting in order to save battery power, but it is a good idea to set in on the lowest energy requirements whenever you can. If you are just typing something in a simple word processor or adding dates to your calendar, you won’t need the performance that you might opening a large and complicate piece of software, playing a computer game or using the internet, for example.
You can read more blog posts by Mary Ann Romans here!
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