Green Computing Best Practices for End Users

With thousands of desktop computers in use at the University of Utah, there is a great amount of power used and a great amount of both paper and electronic waste produced. Some simple solutions can help to reduce the impact of these deployments. Please make use of these best practices in order to develop a practice that best fits your individual needs. These suggestions are intended for users who manage their own computer. If you have a computer administrator, you will want to discuss these practices first on order not to interfere with any automated processes that may be running on your computer.

 

Office Computer-Generated Waste

Power Management

Office Computer-Generated Waste

Important steps toward green computing include modifying paper and toner use, disposal of old computer equipment and purchasing decisions when considering new computer equipment.

Paper Waste

  • Print as little as possible. Review and modify documents on the screen and use print preview. Minimize the number of hard copies and paper drafts you make. Instead of printing, save information to disks, or USB memory sticks.
  • Recycle waste paper, have a recycle bin at each community printer and copier location.
  • Buy and use recycled paper in your printers and copiers. From an environmental point of view, the best recycled paper is 100 percent post-consumer recycled content.
  • Save e-mail whenever possible and avoid needless printing of e-mail messages.
  • Use e-mail instead of faxes or send faxes directly from your computer to eliminate the need for a hard copy. When you must fax using hard copies, save paper using a "sticky" fax address note and not a cover sheet.
  • On larger documents, use smaller font sizes (consistent with readability) to save paper.
  • If your printer prints a test page whenever it is turned on, disable this unnecessary feature.
  • Before recycling paper, which has print on only one side, set it aside for use as scrap paper or for printing drafts.
  • When documents are printed or copied, use double-sided printing and copying. If possible, use the multiple pages per sheet option on printer properties.
  • When general information-type documents must be shared within an office, try circulating them instead of making an individual copy for each person. Even better, make the document electronically available to the audience and display it on a projector.

Electronic Waste

  • Use the campus network where possible to transfer files. This avoids the need to write CDs or DVDs or use floppy diskettes.
  • Use USB memory sticks instead of CDs, DVDs, or floppies.
  • Use re-writable CDs and DVDs.
  • There are hopes of the University Recycling program addressing e-waste in the near future