Steps to Take

• Lights
  • Turn off your lights whenever you leave. (Turning on and off lights does not waste more power.)
  • Take advantage of natural light! Open the shades during the day for lighting and close them at night to keep the heat in.
  • If you use task lighting, be sure to purchase only Compact Fluorescent Light (CFL) bulbs. They use 75% less energy than incandescents (normal bulbs) and last 10 times longer.
  • Turn off lights in bathrooms and common areas. Talk to coworkers about keeping the lights off when nobody is using common areas.
• Computers
  • Turn your computer off when you aren't using it. A desktop will use 780 pounds of carbon dioxide worth of electricity in 24 hours. Contrary to what you might have heard, turning your computer off when you aren't using it is not bad for its hardware.
  • Set your computer and monitor to go into sleep / stand by when they're inactive for too long. A computer in sleep mode uses about 5% the energy of one running a "screen saver". You can find instructions for enabling power management at the Williams College Office For Information Technology's green computing page. You can also read more about computer power management at the Tufts Climate Initiative page.
• Appliances & Other
  • Use common refrigerators rather than buying your own mini refrigerator. A mini refrigerator uses almost as much electricity in a year as a full sized refrigerator, and holds much less.
  • Beware of Vampires! 'Vampire' devices draw power even when they are not being used. These include anything with an adapter or charger such as cell phone chargers, lap top cords, printers, speakers... The best thing to do is keep such devices on a power strip and turn the power strip off when you're not using it.

• Waste
  • Recycle all paper (but re-use one sided!), cans, bottles, batteries, printer cartridges, etc.
  • Print double sided. Williams Office for Information Technology has directions for setting a printer to duplex printing.
  • Use cloth towels to dry your hands instead of the paper towels in the bathroom.