Green Sanctuary Program
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Bellingham Unitarian Fellowship
Green Sanctuary Program |
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National Geographic's Green Guide http://www.thegreenguide.com/buying-guide/laptop-computers EnergyStar Ratings The Energy Star program, run by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), evaluates a wide range of consumer products for their energy efficiency, awarding the EnergyStar label to those that top the list. In July, EPA announced a new class of EnergyStar ratings for desktop computers and laptops. The standards were set so that only the most efficient 25 percent of today's computers would be able to qualify for EnergyStar status. EnergyStar-approved computers will, on average, be 30 percent more efficient than those that don't make the cut. Laptops that qualify for EnergyStar 5.0.approval can be in one of three categories, depending on the computational power of the laptop. The categories are based on the average number of kilowatt hours (kWh) a computer consumes over a typical year of use. kWh is the number of watts of electricity that an electronic device uses in an hour. A 50-watt laptop, for instance, used for an hour, has consumed .05 kWh. Category C, designed for those powerful laptops with two or more cores per processor, designates laptops that use computers use 88.5 to 543 kWh over a year. Category B laptops, those with a separate graphics processors for rendering displays, consume 53 kWh to 41 kWh; and Category A is for all other laptops that use 40 kWh or less. EnergyStar also measures the efficiency of the computer's power supply (which converts alternating current into direct current) as well as how much energy the unit leaks when not being used. EPEAT Ratings While EnergyStar has helped consumers identify more energy-efficient machines, it doesn't address the issue of recyclability. EPA and the nonprofit Greener Electronics Council have created the Electronic Products Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT) as way to gauge how environmentally friendly electronic components are, in terms of materials they are built from and the manufacturer's recycling plans. EPEAT requires that computer manufacturers meet 23 mandatory conditions, such as providing a statement of how much recycled material was used in the product and providing an additional optional three-year warranty to keep the laptop in use longer. EPEAT also has 28 additional criteria, such as requiring the laptop be built from at least 90 percent recyclable materials and that that laptop use batteries that are entirely free of lead, cadmium and mercury. Bronze status is awarded to products that meet all mandatory requirements, silver status goes to products that meet the mandatory requirements, plus 14 of the optional criteria, and gold rated means the machine meets all mandatory requirements and at least 21 optional criteria. All EPEAT-certified products must also be EnergyStar approved. Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) In Europe, laptops must meet standards for not exceeding the maximum level of toxic substances, such as lead, cadmium and mercury. Meeting RoHS is one of the requirements for basic EPEAT certification. Greening Efforts of Laptop Manufacturers Spending dollars on the greenest models sends a message to computer makers. The message seems to be sinking in with laptop makers, who are starting to produce models that are energy efficient and built from recycled material, or at least made from material that could be recycled. Check the manufacturers' Web sites for details of their efforts. Companies such as Apple and Dell have pages dedicated to explaining their efforts at building more eco-friendly computers. Evaluate your needs: What you plan to use your computer for will help you purchase the most efficient one for your needs. If you plan on using the device mostly for simple tasks such as checking e-mail, surfing the Web, or watching a DVD, then take a look at netbooks, which not only cost less, but have processors that sip less energy. These tasks don't require a lot of computational muscle, so a lower- power processor would run them without problem. If you use resource-intensive applications, such as photo editing software, then a laptop with a dual-core processor would be more appropriate. And if you plan to use the unit in extreme environments such as use in moving vehicles or outdoors in damp climates or extreme temperatures, then paying for a rugged model may be the greenest choice because they'll last longer. Look for low-power components: The computer industry is starting to learn that in order to make more power-efficient computers, they need to be made with more power-efficient components. Solid-state drives, although more expensive, consume less power than standard hard-drives (and are a lot more rugged and can be faster as well). Also, look for computers with the new generation of low-power chips. Chips consume up to half of all the power a CPU draws. Intel has released a line of low-power chips, code-named Atom, that consume less power and provide nearly the same performance, as has Via, with its Nano line of processors that are used in numerous netbooks. Look for the names of these processors in the specification sheets. _ Deploy stand-by mode: Computers can be configured to go into sleep, standby, or hibernate mode if left unused after a period of time. EPA recommends having them go into such a mode after 30 to 60 minutes of inactivity, though setting it for a shorter period of time saves even more energy. Using the sleep or hibernate mode can cut an average computer's power consumption by half, the agency estimates. Keep in mind hibernation is not the same as running a screen-saver, which does not, contrary to popular belief, save any energy. EnergyStar offers a free program called EZ Wizard that walks you through the process of setting up power-management features in Microsoft Windows XP. Power-saving software is available for the Macintosh as well, through the Power Save Mac software. Extend laptop lifetime: Does your current laptop do everything you need? If so, consider holding onto it for a while longer. These days, even models five or six years old can execute almost all currently offered software. Getting more life out of your laptop not only saves you money but makes more efficient use of the materials that have already been deployed. If you do get a new laptop, and your old model still works, consider donating it to a non-profit, such as Computers with Causes, which refurbishes computers for educational institutions. Or donate to someone else in need of a computer. Electronic Waste Up until recently, when it came to environmental impact, computers did not have the greatest track record. Each new generation of processors doubled speed, but consumed more energy. And software makers ballooned their programs with new features that would use up all this capacity. As a result, consumers tended to discard their old computers even though they were still operational. This was especially problematic since computers had more than their fair share of toxic chemicals, including lead in the batteries, brominated flame retardants (BRFs), and the polyvinyl chloride (PVC) used for coating wires. When incinerated, PVCs allegedly give off harmful dioxin. Lead, a neurotoxic, can leach into water supplies. And while the word is still out on the danger of BFRs, researchers are increasingly finding traces of the substance in the environment, including humans. The recent influx of green thinking, however, has had a tremendous impact on computer makers. Computer processor manufacturers such as Intel have redesigned their processors to use less power. Computer makers themselves have cut back on the amount of toxic chemicals in the machines, with the understanding that such materials may eventually end up in landfills . The more conscientiousness companies have also used recycled materials. Some companies, such as Dell, even take back their used products free-of-charge, for recycling. This year, analysts estimate that over 177 million laptops will be sold. Many of these are replacement computers, of course. The EPA estimated that 157 million computers were discarded in the U.S. in 2007. The majority of discarded products end up in landfills, or are shipped to other countries for the source materials. In either case, their raw materials can leach into the environment. According to the United Nations, about 20 to 50 million tons of electronic components are discarded each year, and laptops are becoming an increasing part of this refuse mixture. Your computer's carbon footprint varies with the source of your electricity, be it from coal, natural gas or some other source. But using the most commonly used metric, 1.5 lbs per kilowatt hour, an 80-watt laptop will produce .12 pounds of carbon for each hour of use. (Generally speaking laptops themselves are green—they typically use only half the energy of a desktop computer and monitor.) All in all, such use is still light compared to other appliances. A 3,600-watt dishwasher, when run for an hour, will add 5.4 pounds of carbon into the air. The U.S. government has put programs in place, EnergyStar and EPEAT, to highlight the most energy- efficient computers. The EnergyStar program estimates that if all computers sold in the United States were EnergyStar compliant, the country would save $2 billion a year in energy costs. |
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