Sustainability

Sustainability

Sustainability in the Computer Workrooms?

When one person walks into a computer lab, they automatically activate air-conditioning and lighting for that area, which represents 30-40% of the lab's total electricity consumption. Please work in computer labs that are already in use. Below are more tips for energy conservation and paper use reduction. Click on the areas below to see what you can do.

computers and electrical equipment
Computers and Electrical Equipment		 lights
Lights		 paper
Reducing paper use

Computers and electrical equipment

If you can, follow the tips below to reduce your computer's energy use.

  • Turn the brightness of your LCD computer monitor down to 50 % (or as close to that as is comfortable).  For brightness, look for the ‘sunshine’ symbols and arrows on the monitor.
  • Ensure that the standby/sleep/suspend function has been enabled on your computer.  This can more than halve the power used by a computer overnight compared with just logging off.  To change the power management features in Windows XP go to the control panel, select ‘power options’ and select the ‘power schemes’ tab.  Choose the minimum power management scheme.  Then select the ‘turn off monitor’ option to a shorter time, say 10 minutes. 
  • If practicable, shut down your computer over night. 
  • Unplug all external devices (e.g., for ipods, cameras, phones, batteries) when not in use.
  • Turn your computer off at the wall over weekends and holidays.

See the ICTS power management pages for instructions and tips, and contact ICT Service Desk if you have any problems.

Lights

Please switch off lights when:

  • you are the last to leave a communal room
  • (staff and postgraduate students) you leave your office for more than 15 minutes
  • there is sufficient daylight for you to work in.

Modern electronic ballasts (the starter for fluorescent tubes) are very efficient compared to earlier models and can be turned on and off many thousands of times. According to the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority (EECA), the break-even point at which electricity savings outweigh the cost of decreasing lamp life is 10-15 minutes.

Many of the lecture theatres on campus have motion sensors that turn lights off after a certain time if no one is in the room, but smaller lecture theatres and offices are not equipped with these. Please ensure lights are turned off when no one is in the room.

Reduce Paper Use

Printing tips

  • Before you print something, ask yourself if you really need it.
  • Check the print preview mode and only print the pages you need. You can specify which pages to print in the page-range area of the print window.
  • Use single or 1½ spacing instead of double spacing.
  • If you can, print two pages on each side (2-up). Also, print on both sides of a piece of paper (duplex) AND 2-up. See how to Duplex Print and Print more than one page per sheet (2-up).
  • Use laser printers rather than inkjets for black and white printing. It's is usually cheaper and more likely to have built-in energy-suspension modes for energy conservation.

Duplex photocopying

Check to see if you have duplex (double-sided printing) options on your photocopier. They often look something like this (below).

duplex options 2 - 2: Use this for double-sided photocopying where the original is also double-sided.
2 - 1: does the opposite, photocopies double-sided originals to single-sided copies. You won’t want to use this option!
1 - 2: Use this where the original is printed only on one side but you want to photocopy on both sides.
1 - 1: Where both the original and the photocopy are printed only on one side.

 

Note: these options should work both for when you put the originals in the top feeder and for when you photocopy from the glass plate.