This coming Monday is Blog Action Day, an event designed to get bloggers to make posts about environmental responsibility. I am jumping the gun a little bit, but since I usually only post once a week this seems like the best way to make sure I have an appropriate post up on the 15th.

I’m guessing that almost everyone who reads this blog spends a lot of time in front of their computer, but surely you don’t spend all your time in front of the computer. You have to sleep sometime, right? So do you shut your computer down before you go to bed? And many of you probably have a separate computer at work. Do you shut down that computer before you leave for the day?

I’ll admit that I’m pretty bad about this. It’s so convenient to sit down at my computer anytime and immediately start working. I don’t want to wait for a boot up cycle. So I can say confidently that it isn’t realistic for me to try to be turning my computer on and off through out the day. I would never stick to that.

But it’s really not much of a hassle to wait for my computer to boot up first thing in the morning. With a little effort I could shut my computer down each night and save about 8 hours of electricty use.

You may be thinking an idle computer isn’t using very much electricity. You’re right, or course, but imagine how many computers in the world are sitting idle each night (especially computers in office buildings). If all those were turned off, it could add up to some serious energy savings. Looking for a more solid grasp on how electricity use translates into pollution? Check out this Pollution from Energy Use Calculator.

If you offer your processing power up to SETI@home or perhaps a medical research program, then by all means keep your computer on 24 hours a day. Otherwise this is a great way to do a little something to improve the environment that requires nearly zero effort.

filed under: General News