Office Greening for the Holidays: Closing Up Shop

If your organization is like many other offices in the U.S., your office will be closed for several days during these next two weeks. Here are a ten items to check off your list while shutting down for those days. In addition to helping the environment, you will also save money on electricity and prolong the life of many of your office electronics.

1. Shut down all computers; don't just put them in sleep mode. Computers in sleep mode still use a lot of energy.

2. Consider turning off servers that will not be used. Obviously, you can't shut down the server running your Web site or email, but do you need the file server running or the print server? Before unplugging computers and servers, please check with your IT department if you have one. They may be planning upgrades and backups while you are away from your computer.

3. Turn off all peripheral accessories like monitors, speakers, docking stations, etc. This can be easy if you have a smart power strip.

4. Turn off other office machines; don't just put them in sleep mode. Copiers, printers, scanners, projectors, and maybe even your fax machine. Look for those machines around your office that have a little green light glowing on them. If you can, shut them down or unplug them. Unplug TVs, VCRs, and DVD players. Unplug chargers for computers, cell phones, iPods, and other chargeable devices. Shut off as many power strips as you can.

According to Green Home Huddle "Your cell phone charger, iPod charger, laptop charger, etc. keep drawing electricity even if your phone/Ipod/laptop/etc isn't charging. So if your phone says 'charge complete' (or worse, isn't even attached to your charger), pull out the charger."

In addition to your technology, look for these other resource-wasters:

5. Turn down the heat. If the office is empty, no one will complain if it gets a little chilly, but make sure to keep it above freezing so your pipes don't burst.

6. Look for personal lights, radios, fans and heaters left on around the office. Switch them off or unplug.

7. In the kitchen, unplug coffee pots, the microwave, and anything else that has a clock or is needlessly using power in standby mode.

8. Make sure no water is dripping and no toilets running.

9. Did you plug in festive lights and decorations? Please unplug them while you are gone.

10. Before going on break, you might also consider doing a little technical house-cleaning. Throw away files and emails you no longer need, organize your files so you can find things more easily, reboot the servers that will continue to run over the vacation like email and Web servers. If you are storing less, you need fewer and smaller hard drives and your backup systems won’t have to work as hard.

Lastly, don't forget to turn off the lights!

Happy Green Holidays from all of us at TechSoup Global's GreenTech Initiative. And just so you know, TechSoup will be closing up shop (and using these tips to do so) from Thursday, December 25 and reopening on Monday, January 5, 2009.

See you all in the New Year!