5 Habits for Greener Computing
July 11, 2008 · Print This Article
1. Save Paper and Ink
I receive a lot of press releases and other printed documents that I never read more than once if ever, so when I can get away with it I print on the reverse side of these pieces, reserving my pristine sheets for letters and other important documents. The savings are tangible: Ive bought exactly one 500-sheet pack of paper in the last two years.
You can save more paper by shrinking your text and printing two pages side by side on one sheet of paper, if your printer driver allows it. Youd better have good eyesight, though. In Windows XP, choose Print, and then select Preferences or Print Setup. Look for an option called Pages per Sheet, and set it to 2.
GreenPrint World; click to view full-size image.
If you print a lot from the Web, you should absolutely download a copy of the ad-supported GreenPrint World so that you can trim the stuff you dont need printed, which saves both paper and ink or toner.You can also save ink–easily the most expensive part of any inkjet printer–by printing in draft mode whenever possible. Look for more tips in “The Cheapskates Guide to Printing.”
2. Stop Wasting CDs and DVDs
I cant count the number of times someone has burned a disc just to give me, say, 100MB of data, leaving the remaining 600MB or, worse, 4GB or more unused. Rewritable discs cost more and take a little longer to burn, but theyre perfect for passing data back and forth without throwing out all that metal and plastic.
Aleratec CD/DVD shredder
When you’re done with your discs, you can recycle them by sending them to GreenDisk for responsible destruction and reuse. You must pay a small fee–$6.95 for boxes 20 pounds or lighter–but you can also cram in any other electronic waste you have lying around. Though GreenDisk guarantees that the material on your discs wont fall into the wrong hands, the extracautious can protect their data beforehand using Aleratecs CD/DVD Shredder. Despite its name, the CD/DVD Shredder actually pounds thousands of tiny pits into the surface of a disc, rendering it unreadable. Aleratec doesnt sell it anymore, but it does turn up on Amazon and eBay.
Read the entire how-to from PC World
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