Part 1 of this series listed the five actions we recommend that you take to reduce the power use of your computer. Part 2 explained in more detail, two cost-saving actions and tells you how to complete those two actions. This post, fills in the details about two more recommendations.

Upfront Cost, but Should Save You Money Within the Year

3.    Order a smart power strip.

Light green: easy individual actions

These types of power strips automatically turn off your peripherals (monitor, speakers, desk lights) when you shut down your computer and generally consume only 1 watt while on. Plug your computer into the main (switching outlet) and then plug your monitor, speakers, printer or other accessories into the other outlets. When you shut down your computer, the peripherals will shut off automatically. These strips also have always on ports for items like a fax machine that would need to remain on after the computer is off.

TechSoup has been a long-time advocate for refurbished PCs. They're low-cost, they work well for most purposes, and there's a brilliant environmental case for electronics reuse. We offer a whole host of them to nonprofits and libraries through the Refurbished Computer Initiative (to which we just added 16 new products!) and have found it to be a really successful offering for our users.

One major area of controversy about reburbished computers is the question on whether or not the used PC market can last given the diminishing prices of new equipment. Kevin Lo wrote about new, lower-cost netbooks a while back on this blog, posing the question of whether they're ready for the spotlight in nonprofits or not. I think the jury is still out, particularly since many can't run enterprise-class programs and networks, but they may be a good solution for smaller nonprofits.

Jim Lynch, regular blogger and our director of computer recycling and reuse decided to see what research is out there on the subject of whether or not the used computer market is going away any time soon, and has come up with some interesting results in his new article, Is the Used Computer Market Going Away?

The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that in the U.S. in 2007, only 18% of electronic waste was collected for recycling and a full 82%, or 1.84 million tons, was disposed of, primarily in landfills.

With these types of statistics, we feel an obligation to do our part to help curb e-waste while at the same time promoting the efficient use of technology to help social benefit organizations most effectively meet their missions.

For the last three years, OneWebDay "has attracted a global network of partner organizations and individual activists committed to broadening public awareness of Internet and web issues while deepening a culture of participation in building a web that works for everyone."

This day is considered a day of action for digital inclusion, much like Earth Day has become a day of action for environmental issues. Grassroots organizers and individuals around the world are raising awareness, taking action, and encouraging change on a broad host of issues where web and Internet technologies are concerned. From expanding access to free WiFi, to creating public computing spaces, to expanding crowdsourced translation services for web content, OneWebDay is bringing together ideas and action for making the web truly a place for all.

In 2008, OneWebDay organizers documented volunteer-driven events in 34 different cities across the world. This year events are happening in over 50 cities in 20 countries!

OneWebDay is all about your passion for the web and your creativity. Visit the OneWebDay site to learn more and find out how you can participate!

A bit over a year ago, we talked about U.S.-based EPEAT, the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool, which is a non-commercial program that rates how environmentally friendly new IT equipment is according to three tiers of environmental performance which they mark with bronze, silver, and gold.

EPEAT ranks computers, monitors, and (soon) TVs based on 23 required attributes and 28 additional optional attributes. The criteria range from energy use to elimination of hazardous materials. EPEAT is essentially the only green IT product accreditation program in the world. The big green IT news this week is that the program has now expanded to 40 countries (PDF) worldwide including Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Taiwan, and the 27 countries of the European Union.

TechSoup is hosting upcoming 6th Annual International Computer Refurbisher Summit (ICRS 2009). This year's summit will be held in Miami Beach, Florida on October 14 and 15 with the theme of "Prospering in Recessionary Times."

ICRS is one of the lesser-known events in the electronics recycling industry. Most electronics recyclers do some amount of whole-system or parts reclamation, but this is the place where people who focus on electronics reuse get together to talk shop every year. It's the best opportunity to meet people and form relationships with refurbishers and asset recovery managers, coordinate efforts, and to get some clarity on issues from a reuse perspective.

In last week's post, we told you what an all-in-one printer was and some of the benefits of choosing them over several stand-alone devices. Did we pique your interest? If you are considering buying a multifunction printer (MFP), here are a few buying guides and ratings that can help you make sense of the various functions and specifications so that you can choose the one that's right for you and your office.

To determine how green a device is look for some of these factors:

• Power consumption: Look for Energy Star compliance.
• Auto-duplexing: Has functionality to automatically print on both sides of a sheet of paper.
• Toner: Amount of toner usage (toner is a very toxic substance). Please refill or recycle your toner cartridges and consider buying refurbished cartridges. Be careful of solid ink printers. They do not use cartridges and are reported to use less toner and therefore you will need to change it less often, potentially saving you money and hassle. However, Wikipedia list some significant drawbacks including energy use and the potential for ink waste.
• Paper Types: Steer clear of printers that need specialty paper to print text. Specialty papers are often more expensive and may be difficult to recycle. Conservatree has some recommendations about choosing the right paper for your project and finding a good source. They even have some photo paper recommendations. And you can read some facts about copy or multi-purpose paper.
  
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In June of 2008, we posted information about US consumer electronics retailer, Best Buy, starting a pilot program to collect discarded consumer electronic devices at some of their locations in the United States.

As of February 2009, stores in all 50 states now offer this ecycling program, which is now called Greener Together. This is a great voluntary program for the United States' largest consumer electronics retailer because it takes most discarded electronic devices at no cost, with one exception which I'll explain below. There is no legal obligation for the company to do this nationally, and it's simply a very convenient for most people to have one place where they can take any used electronic items they don't want any more. Kudos to Best Buy for taking their pilot program nationwide.

One quibble I have with the program is that doesn't seem to address or promote electronics reuse except for "gently used"equipment that applies to their Tech Trade-In program. By contrast the Dell/Goodwill Reconnect partnership offers a similar service, provides donation tax credits, and does have reuse built in to it. The downside is that the Reconnect program hasn't rolled out to all Goodwill stores in the U.S. yet.

Best Buy's Greener Together program has a $10 charge for accepting TVs 32 inches and under, computer monitors, and laptops, however, in exchange they give you a $10 Best Buy gift card. You can bring in up to two items a day, per household. They accept most unwanted electronic devices no matter where they were purchased.

TechSoup has been working on the strangely difficult problem of increasing the volume of five-year-old-and-newer computers donated to our Refurbished Computer Initiative (RCI) program and also to other refurbishers that supply IT equipment to schools, nonprofits, and low-income families for some years now. In RCI we accept bulk donations of 100 or more computers at a time.

When we published our Islands in the Wastestream report on the state of the noncommercial computer refurbishing field in 2004, one of our essential findings was that a lack of steady donated computer supplies is one of the primary inhibitors to the computer reuse field. It was true then and it's still true now, especially in recessionary times when companies are either extending the leases on their IT equipment or simply holding on to the computers they have beyond the normal three to four years they ordinarily keep them.

Just last week, TechSoup officially has a new donor partner — Sun Microsystems — which has started donating remanufactured Sun Fire X4100 M2 x64 servers to eligible nonprofits and libraries through TechSoup. These are robust, factory remanufactured 2.5 GHz computer servers that have hot-swappable hard drives, power supplies, and fans. If one essential part of the server fails, it can be replaced with minimal downtime. These servers come with the Sun Solaris 10 operating system, but will work with other operating systems and also with virtualization software that allows a single server to do the work of multiple servers.