How Green is Your Web Work?
November 26th, 2007 (11:00am) Mike Gunderloy 7 Comments
One of the reasons folks (including us) trot out frequently in support of web work is that it’s good for the environment. The equation is pretty simple: if you telecommute, you’re not tearing up the highways and burning petroleum-based fuels to the detriment of the atmosphere. As an added bonus, your employer can build fewer cubicles and parking lots, lowering their load on the planet.
But as Geoff Livingston points out, these days the bar for being green is going up. As Geoff says”green claims must be backed with supporting actions” to have people take you seriously. And that opens the question: what else can web workers do to be green?
I don’t claim to have all the answers, but there are a few areas that seem to be obvious candidates for a web worker focus. Energy consumption is one: if we swap cars for more computers, our carbon footprint doesn’t go down as much as it might. We’ve looked at cutting down on vampire power as a way to attack this in the past. Virtual machines can also offer computer – and power – savings.
The other area where web workers seem well-placed to offer leadership in green business is in cutting down on business travel. While we’ve discussed the benefits of attending conferences in the past, flying hundreds of people around the country (or the world) for a weekend certainly has an impact. Even a meeting with clients in the next city may put half a dozen team members in individual cars. Between videoconferencing, social networks, instant messaging, and email, we have the tools to eliminate most of these in-person meetings. Whether your corporate culture – or your clients’ – will tolerate doing business without face-to-face meetings is another question, but over the long run, I suspect more and more companies will make a virtue of operating virtually.
Of course, you’ll find lots of exciting, high-tech ways to help save the planet over at our sister site Earth2Tech. If you’re searching for help in finding the technology that will combat climate change, they’ve got all the pointers you’ll ever need. As web workers, we should be poised to effectively implement some of these technologies in the workplace.
Are you concerned with being green in your own web working life? What steps do you take in pursuit of that goal?
7 Comments Post your own comment
Mary says: November 26th, 2007 1:50pm
well said Mike
I think it’s about time we started using the technology to reduce travel. true that is not the only solution – but its a start. True web meeting will never completely replace good old fashion face -to face but it beats spending a whole lot of time waiting around airports and eating airline food. But seriously, some attention should be given to the amount of travel that can be reduced using ICTs.
Darren Meyer says: November 26th, 2007 1:54pm
While a subject of some debate, carbon offset credits can be purchased (and retired!) to offset the activities of your web work. I’ve found that being able to claim carbon neutrality has the added benefit of being an excelent marketing tool.
If that’s not your speed (actually, even if it is), you can rarely go wrong by reducing consumption. When your bulbs die, replace most of them with compact-flourescent (CFL). Use task lighting rather that illuminating your entire room.
Use LCD monitors for your displays, and make sure power-saving features of your computers are properly configured. Don’t stop at setting the time for your display and disks to sleep, make sure that processor power-scaling is available and working — that way, your CPU won’t draw as much power when its full capabilities aren’t needed.
Using a lower-end video card in your work computer will help as well — gaming-quality video cards draw incredible amounts of power, and produce quite a bit of heat (which you have to spend power in terms of fans and possibly A/C removing).
Keep an eye on peripheral usage — do you really need your printer on right now? What about your webcam? Anything plugged into that powered USB hub? Don’t forget that your power usage goes up when you plug USB devices in, whether or not you’re using a powered hub.
When possible, use a corded phone — the power for such phones is transmitted on the telephone line, and is significantly less (in most cases) than what’s pulled to operate (not to mention charge!) a cordless phone. In fact, avoiding wireless peripherals (like Bluetooth mice) will often have a decidedly positive effect on your power consumption.
Mark Roseman says: November 26th, 2007 2:13pm
When available, consider alternative sources for your electricity.
For example, we use Bullfrog Power, which is available in parts of Canada. If our power consumption is e.g. 100kW, they’ll purchase 100kW of power from an eco-friendly wind power provider, which is fed into the grid. Net result, that’s 100kW less of coal-based or oil-based power being generated and fed into the grid, with all the environmental benefits that provides.
Charlie says: November 26th, 2007 3:58pm
You can see how green your site is at:
http://www.co2stats.com/
Darren Meyer says: November 27th, 2007 7:08am
@Charlie:
That reminded me: Dreamhost (http://dreamhost.net) is a green hosting provider, they buy carbon offset credits for all the CO2 their data center produces (estimated, no doubt).
The Daily Sprout « Earth2Tech says: November 27th, 2007 4:05pm
[...] How Green is Your Web Work?: “If you telecommute, you’re not tearing up the highways and burning petroleum-based fuels to the detriment of the atmosphere.” — WebWorkerDaily. [...]
Make Your Telecommute Even Greener » Things Are Good: good news says: November 29th, 2007 7:32am
[...] at Web Worker Daily, they recently asked readers how to make web working more green. I don’t claim to have all the answers, but there are a few areas that seem to be obvious [...]