EcoLinking#5 Are you Computer "Green?" by Don Rittner More than 75 million Americans own a personal computer and this number is rapidly climbing as computers become more affordable. Many more use computers in their workplace (more than 40 million intel-based PCs and 7 million laserwriters use 18.2 billion kilowatt/hours of electricity per year!) Most people think of computers as relatively pollution free, but the act of computing is not. Here are a few tips to help make your computing a bit more environmentally correct. The Computer If you work in an office where there are many terminals and leave your monitors on, turn off your heat in the room during winter months. There is enough heat coming from the monitors to keep the room warm. If you're working at home, or with one computer at a time, turn off the monitor when not using it, or use a screensaver that will dim or turn off the monitor when it's idle. This will extend the life of your monitor by preventing phosphor burn-in. Turn off the computer before you leave the office. Folks think leaving them on is better for the computer - not so. Leaving them on 24 hours a day means using more than 1,750 kwh per computer per year - a cost of about $175 per computer. Electronic Mail If your office doesn't have all computers networked together, do it! The use of electronic mail for interoffice correspondence can save a tremendous amount of paper. American offices last year generated more than 775 billion pages of paper - read that 14 million tons of paper a year, or 238 million trees. Floppy Disk Do you have 3 1/2 inch floppies that just don't hold data any more? Well, don't throw them away. They make great coasters for your morning coffee! Disk Storage Don't go out and buy those wooden or plastic disk storage boxes. If you or a friend has a newborn child (or know someone who has), the rectangular "baby wipes" box makes a great disk storage container. You can fit about 50 disks in a box. Soak off the labels and label the boxes using a magic marker. Disk recycling You can send in your old floppies for recycling of their component materials to: Dyson Enviro-Center, 218 Railroad Ave, Milpitas, CA 95035. Printers If you use a dot matrix or Laserwriter, there are a few things you can do. First, use recycled paper (and envelopes) in both types of printers, and remember to use the "back" side of sheets that you print as drafts. There is nothing wrong with using the second side of the sheet. This cuts your consumption of paper in half. Proof your work before you print. Most wasted paper is from stupid typos! If you use cloth-type ribbons in your dot matrix printer, you can re-ink those ribbons. In fact, you can get up to 15-20 re-inks per ribbon and the quality of the print is usually darker than with newer ribbons. This also reduces the cost per ribbon. Many computer user groups have re-inkers and charge $1 to re-ink (vs $5-15 per new ribbon). Labels Of course you should be using recycled paper labels for envelopes. MACO from Hillside, New Jersey, makes self-sticking computer labels, file folder labels, and more. Toner Cartridges For Laserwriter users, many of the toner cartridge manufacturers are now recycling those cartridges and donating money to environmental organizations. Some pay you! They pay for the UPS shipping too. Also, there are companies that will recharge your toner cartridge for considerably less than the cost of a new one ($40 compared to $90). Considering that more than 98% of the 15 million cartridges sold in 1991 ended up in landfills, and only a fraction recycled, you can see how important it is to recycle those toner cartridges. TONER CARTRIDGE RECYCLING Apple Clean Earth Campaign 800.776.2333 Donates 50 cents to National Wildlife Federation and Nature Conservancy per cartridge. Call them and they send you a prepaid UPS shipping label. Canon Clean Earth Campaign 800.962.2708 Canon has the same deal as Apple. Dataproducts Imaging Supplies Division 800.423.5095 Dataproducts will pay you $10 for each Canon SX cartridge plus the shipping if you send 28 or more cartridges at a time. Lexmark Operation Resource 800.848.9894 Recycles the six IBM Laser Printer models in its 4019 and 4029 series. Will send you a postage paid container. They give the returned cartridges to a workshop for the handicapped which makes money by selling the parts to recycling companies. Qume Corporation 800.421.4326 Large organizations designate an employee fund or charity to receive the money from their recycling effort. RTI Corporation 800.886.673 RTI will pay you $2.50 for each toner cartridge you send them. They will send you a prepaid UPS sticker as well. RECHARGERS Recycleneur Institute 305.539.0701 For every used cartridge collected from a local organization, they donate $2 to a scholarship fund to help entrepreneurs break into the recycling business. The institute will mail you a list of cartridge recycling companies in your area. International Cartridge Recycling Association 202.857.1154 Another good source for information. Computer Magazines Don't throw away those read computer magazines. You can recycle those too. Donate them to your local public library, user groups, doctor's offices, health clubs, even laundries. [M] c1992-1993 Don Rittner Don Rittner is the author of EcoLinking: Everyone's Guide to Online Environmental Information (Peachpit Press, 92. 800-283-9444), and a columnist for The Earth Times. You can reach Don via Internet mail at AFLDONR@AOL.COM where he hosts the Environmental Forum on America Online.