Home Electronics and Your Carbon Footprint
Regular home electronics use up an amazing 25% of the average home’s energy, and thus constitute a quarter of your home’s carbon footprint. But it need not be this way, as there are many ways to reduce the carbon emissions that are directly related to these devices.
The average American home owns 2 TVs, a VCR, a DVD player, and 3 phones. And that doesn’t count portable devices like cell phones, hair dryers, and iPods!
If everyone in the US switched their home electronics to energy efficient ones in an effort to cut their carbon footprint, it would reduce carbon emissions by 25 billions pounds. That is the equivalent of taking 3 million cars off the road.
Apart from buying new energy saving devices, there are plenty of measures you can take around the home to cut the carbon footprint caused by your electronic gadgets. Many of these gadgets will have an accompanying plug in battery charger. Most people will leave their devices plugged in charging for longer than necessary, thus drawing more energy and contributing to global warming. Be sure to unplug your devices as soon as you can after they are done charging. But don’t stop there. Leaving your charger plugged in, even without being attached to the device it is meant to charge, will continue to draw energy that is just going to waste. Always unplug the charger from the wall when you are done with it, otherwise you will keep contributing to your carbon footprint.
Two areas of the house that contain most of your home electronics and have the biggest contribution to your carbon emissions are your home office and your entertainment system. Both areas are full of different electronic devices, many of which use high levels of energy to operate. To make it worse, most of these are never off, but rather they are left on standby. Shockingly, your TV and DVD player use up more energy in a year from the time they are on standby then the time they are actually being used. For all of these peripheral devices (DVD player, speakers, video game consoles, printers, etc…), be sure that you actually turn them off, not just leave them on standby. This can have a big impact on your carbon footprint and on global warming.
For your computer or laptop monitor, set the energy saving options to have the monitor turn off after only a few minutes without activity. This is an easy way to reduce your carbon footprint. You can also set the computer to go to standby or hibernate after a certain amount of inactivity.
If you are ready to do a bit of shopping, be sure that you are buying electronics that are proven to use less energy. A bit of research on some competing products will help you find the model with the least impact on your carbon footprint.
There are a few specific things to look for when shopping for electronics to reduce global warming. For cordless phones, try to find a model with a ‘smart charger’ that stops charging when the phone on the base is fully charged.
Cut Your Footprint also strongly recommends getting a power saving power bar. This will turn off all electrical devices plugged into when a main device is turned off. So when you turn off your computer or your TV, all the peripheral devices automatically get turned off to. A great and easy way to reduce your carbon footprint and help fight global warming.
|
Share This Story: |
