Everything You Need to Know about Being Green with Your Electronics and Becoming Eco-friendly

Everything You Need to Know about Being Green and Becoming Eco-friendly with Your Electronics

Technology is constantly changing life as we know it. Every new computer made changes our habits and the way we connect with the world around us. I remember the days of floppy disks and Oregon Trail. Wireless wasn’t available to everyone yet and MP3 players were known as “walkmans”. Now, disks have become USB devices and Oregon Trail paved the way for games like WoW.

In this day and age, keeping up with the latest technological advances has become the latest trend. Television, radio, and other methods of advertisements have pretty much embedded into our brains that we have to buy the latest iPhone, or else our world will spiral into chaos. Well, here’s an idea to shake things up a bit: instead of wasting money on products you don’t need, how about adopting some green technology habits, which will save you money and prolong the life of the electronic products you already have?

Sounds crazy, right? Ah, but it works! Going green with your electronics is one of the easiest things you can do. It’s good for your electronics, your wallet, and the planet. Keep reading to find out how.

 

Batteries

The battery comes in a variety of shapes and sizes. It can power anything from your wristwatch to your car. Considering how much we depend on batteries, it should be no surprise that at least 15 billion batteries are produced globally every year. Out of that 15 billion, the United States purchases nearly 3 billion. And out of that 3 billion, nearly 179,000 tons of batteries end up in landfills across the country every year.

You may think “big deal, they’re just batteries.” Well, actually, it is a big deal. The manufacturing of batteries alone consumes a lot of resources and usually also involves hazardous chemicals. Some of the elements that make up batteries today are cadmium, lead, and mercury (although mercury has been banned in most cases). Now imagine 179,000 tons of batteries slowly breaking down in a landfill. Those chemicals will leak out of the batteries and into the environment. Once in the environment, they can poison the land, the animals, and even your water supply. Enough exposure to all that toxicity may give you a whole mess of health problems, like high blood pressure, dementia, or it could simply kill you.
Eco-friendly Green Rechargeable Batteries

So, what are the green battery options? The top choice is to go rechargeable. Buy yourself a battery charger and rechargeable batteries. They can be reused again and again and again, keeping more money in your pocket and more batteries out of the landfill. Plus, 1 billion kilowatt hours of power could be saved every year (in the US), if people used energy efficient battery chargers. This would also save more than $100 million each year and prevent more than 1 million tons of greenhouse gases from being released into the atmosphere.

If you have to buy non-rechargeable batteries, go for the Lithium-Ion (Li-Ion) and Nickel Metal Hydride (NiMH) batteries. Li-Ion batteries are a bit more expensive, but they come with a higher energy/weight ration, higher voltage, and will hold their charge for a longer period of time when not in use.

Regardless of which type of battery you use, when it comes time to dispose of them, do not throw your batteries in the trash; recycle them! BatteryRecycling.com and Call2Recycle.org offer battery recycling programs for individuals, businesses, and corporations. Also, search Earth911.com to see where you can recycle batteries in your area.

 

Chargers

Many electronic products come with chargers, either for batteries or the product itself. In fact, right now, there are at least 1.5 billion chargers (or power adapters) in use in the US. Their total combined electricity makes up 11% of the national electric bill. It’s these very chargers that are highly responsible for energy wasted on phantom power (which you’ll read about after this section).

Fortunately, there are many eco-friendly options on the market today. That’s right: you don’t need to use one of those big, bulky adapter plugs anymore. You can actually charge many devices with renewable energy (solar and wind), or even manual power. The awesome thing about these new chargers is they allow you to charge items on the go. They have skins for iPhones that double as solar chargers, mini wind turbine chargers you can attach to your bike, and they’re even developing a dance charger. If you love to go clubbing at night, the dance charger will be perfect for you. The battery is charged by your dancing and then that battery can be used to power your electronic devices.

How many times have you been out somewhere, maybe a park or the beach, and your cell phone battery is dying? You aren’t going to find an electrical socket buried in the sand or attached to a tree. So, all you have to do is pull out your solar charger and let the sun take care of the rest. You could also use a manual, hand-crank charger. There are actually LED flashlights powered by hand-cranking available at K-Mart. Turning the crank for 1 minute will power the flashlight for an entire hour! And when the light goes out, you don’t have to worry about finding new batteries; all you need to do is turn the crank again and the light will turn back on. This is especially useful during blackouts and camping trips.

 

Phantom Power

Phantom Power (or Vampire Power) is the power your electronic devices use when they are plugged in, but not turned on. That’s right, your TV, computer, and even your cell phone charger all consume energy, even when you’re not using them. In fact, 40% of the energy used for your home electronics is when they are turned off. That’s a lot of energy and money you are wasting on devices that aren’t even in use!

The solution? Well, you could unplug every single electronic device in your home when not in use (not counting appliances, like the fridge or oven). However, that can be very tedious and difficult for some, especially if there is a large piece of furniture blocking the wall outlet. Anything that has a bulky, AC-like adapter plug is especially prone to draining energy.

Fortunately, there is a much simpler solution: power strips. Buy some power strips and plug your devices into that, instead of the wall. When you’re done using the computer, watching TV, or charging your phone, just flip the switch on the power strip. This allows you to keep things plugged in, but cuts any vampire power they’d normally consume. If you are the forgetful type, look for “smart” power strips. Even if you forget to flip the switch, they will automatically detect when plugged in items aren’t in use, and will slay (cut off) the vampire power for you.

 

E-Cycle

E-cycling is a fairly new term, but I’m pretty sure you can guess what it means. To “e-cycle” means to recycle your e-waste (or electronic waste). I know you may be tempted to throw that old video game system, broken computer, and printer cartridges into the garbage can. However, that would be very silly of you and I’ll tell you why.

The world generates 20 – 50 tons of e-waste every year and only 11.4% of that is recovered for recycling.

There are people and companies out there that will pay you for recycling your used electronics. Phones, computers, cameras, calculators, mp3 players, printers, video game systems, TVs, and more; you can get cash (or store credit) for it all. It should be noted that how much cash you get will depend on how new the item is and the condition it’s in. Sites worth checking out include: BuyMyTronics.com, FlipSwap.com, Gazelle.com, and NextWorth.com.

Now, although you might not get cash for that VCR from the 80s, or the computer monitor with a cracked screen, you can still recycle old and broken items. Go to Earth911.com and use their search engine to find out where you can recycle electronics near you.

What happens to all these e-cycled products? They get turned into new electronics! Many companies these days are using parts from recycled electronics to make new cell phones, laptops, and more. A lot of places are also offering “lightly used” electronics for sale, especially cell phones. Which brings up another point: if you want to sell or trade in your used electronics, if any are a good quality item, there is a good chance they can be repurposed and resold (at a lower cost) to someone else, before being e-cycled. You could actually be one of those customers and buy e-cycled products as well, or even trade items for free at Freecycle.org. Either way, buying or selling, you are helping by recycling, extending the use of the product, and maintaining a lower carbon footprint by not sending it to a landfill, or rushing out to buy the latest iPhone just because it’s new.

 

 

 

As always, here are some more scary statistics for you:

• Electronics thrown in the trash (and not e-cycled) make up 70% of all hazardous waste!
• It takes 529 pounds of fossil fuels, 49 pounds of chemicals, and 1.5 tons of water to make one new, 53-pound, desktop computer system (including monitor)! n
• Americans tossed 3 million tons of electronics into the trash, in 2006.
• E-waste (electronic waste) rises approximately 8% per year.

 

Products

I’ll bet you’re wondering about different kinds of products at this point and how they measure up on the green scale. To find out how green a product really is, check out the Greenpeace Guide to Greener Electronics. Their guide ranks companies on 3 important factors:

1. If the company cleans up their products by eliminating hazardous substances
2. If the company has take-back or recycle programs for their products, once they become obsolete
3. If the company makes the effort to reduce the climate impacts of their operations and products

You can also check out Greenopia’s rankings of Small Electronics and Large Electronics. Their ranking system is a bit more in-depth than Greenpeace’s, and includes scoring on: Certification, Corporate Responsibility, Eco-Packaging, Efficient Use Phase, Low-Impact Materials, Nontoxic, Production, and Renewable Power. They also rate other categories, like airlines, food, pet supplies, and beauty products.

However, for some specifics, keep on reading.

 

Cell Phones
There are more than 700 million cell phones used in the US today and at least 140 million of those cell phone users will ditch their current phone for a new phone every 14-18 months. I shouldn’t have to say this, but such habits are totally unnecessary and very irresponsible. You don’t need to rush out and buy the latest iPhone as soon as it comes out. If you already have a cell phone, enjoy it! Cell phones can actually have a surprisingly long life-span (if you actually take care of them). Plus, with all the features of touch-phones today, it eliminates the need for other electronics in your life. A lot of phones have alarm clocks, mp3 players, GPS systems, video and camera capabilities, calculators, calendars, notepads, and even the options to do banking and shopping. That eliminates 6 electronic gadgets, saves some paper, and saves you gas money. How awesome is that? Considering all the money you just saved using your current phone, don’t you think it would be wiser to save that money, instead of spending it on another new phone you clearly don’t need?

Here’s another tip for cell phone use. Have you ever had the misfortune of dropping your phone in water, or leaving it out in the rain? It probably won’t work (or even turn on) and you may think you need to rush out and buy a new phone. There is actually a really cool fix for this problem:

Remove the back of the phone and take out the battery. Put the phone and the battery in a sealed container of uncooked rice. Make sure there is enough rice in the container to fully cover the phone and the battery. Leave it sit overnight (or 8-12 hours). By the next day, your phone should be dry and working with no problems!

Unfortunately, there is a big downside to cell phones: the cell phone charger. When plugged in, only 5% of the power consumed by a cell phone charger is used to actually charge the phone. The other 95% of power is consumed when the charger is plugged into the wall and not charging anything (phantom power).  Always remember to unplug your cell phone charger when you’re not using it!

Despite that downside, there are a few other simple things you can do that will prolong the life of your phone and green your usage of it at the same time:

When not in use, turn off your phone. This includes when you’re at the movie theater, or in an airplane. Cell phone use is restricted in both places anyway, so why waste the power and energy?

Ditch the animated wallpaper/screen saver. As cool as it looks, it still uses a lot of energy and considering the phone probably spends more time in your pocket, why waste power on a screen saver you won’t even be watching most of the time?

Minimize the amount of time the phone’s backlight remains on and reduce the brightness of it, if possible.

Use one of the simple ringtones that comes with your phone. Vibrate and musical ringtones tend to use a lot more power and let’s be honest, when is the last time you heard a cell phone ring that actually sounded like a phone, instead of a Katy Perry song or movie soundtrack?

If you like to wear a headset, use a corded one instead of the wireless Bluetooth option. Corded headsets consume less energy, and you won’t look like some crazy person talking to yourself.

Keep your phone clean. Every so often, turn off your phone and wipe down the screen, keys, and remove the back and clean the inside and battery. Dust and debris can sometimes shorten battery life, so ensuring your phone is clean will help keep it in top condition.

Only charge your phone when necessary. It may be habit to plug in your phone every night before you go to bed, but that’s a very wasteful habit. A lot of phones these days can keep their battery charged for a couple days at least. As long as you don’t overuse phone features that drain battery power (like video, internet, and photos), you should only charge your phone every few days, when the battery is actually going dead.

Computers
Did you know that most of the money you spend on your computer is going right down the drain? Of all the money you spend on powering your computer, only 15% of that goes towards when the computer is being used; the other 85% is wasted when your computer is idling (turned on, but not being used). Another scary thing about computers is the manufacturing of computer parts uses more water, fossil fuels, energy, toxic chemicals, and elemental gases than any other industry. That doesn’t make them sound too eco-friendly now, does it?

Here’s a few more statistics about computers:

• There are at least 300 million obsolete computers in the US today.
• 81% of a desktop computer’s total lifetime energy consumption goes towards just making the product.
• At least 50% of a computer can be recycled today. The rest, however, ends up in landfills.

 

So far, it seems like there is a lot of bad info that comes with computer use. The good news is there are things you can do to reduce your computer’s energy consumption and make it more Eco-friendly.

Turn off the screen saver. Like cell phones, screen savers can consume a lot of unnecessary energy.

If you’re not going to be using the computer for a few hours or more, shut it down. This also includes connected devices, like speakers and printers. You should also plug everything into a power strip and flip the switch to cut any phantom power that would be consumed otherwise.

If you do need to leave the computer on for a while, set it to Hibernate, Sleep, or Standby. Be sure to check out other power-saving options that might come with your computer, as they can be programmed to automatically shut down your computer or set it to hibernate after a specific length of time. These settings allow you to keep your computer on and programs open, but will consume a lot less energy while you’re away.

When you are using the computer, make the screen only as bright as you need it to be.

If you need to get a new computer, buy a laptop instead of a desktop; they consume less than 50% of the electricity that a desktop computer does. You should also look into computers made from recycled parts, or even used computers.

If you’ve had your computer for a while, you may notice that it runs slower than when you first bought it. Run the virus checker, disk cleanup, system error checking, and disk defragmenter programs to help speed things up a bit. You should also clear your browser’s history and cache, empty your recycle bin, and delete/remove any programs or files that you may not use very often. If you have a desktop computer, it is also a good idea to open it up once in a while (either via a side or back panel on the tower) and clean out the dust that’s probably accumulated in there.

 

That’s it for this article, but here are a few final tips and links to check out:

Look for Energy Star and EPEAT labels. Both indicate the product is eco-friendly; EPEAT GOLD labels are especially good.

Look for products made from as many recycled parts as possible, or buy used.

Enjoy what you have. Taking care of the electronics you already own will prolong their life, save you money, and lighten your carbon footprint.

Look for products that come in a minimal amount of packaging. The packaging should also be recyclable.

Offset your carbon footprint with renewable energy credits. Check out these sites for more info: Bullfrog Power, Native Energy, Renewable Choice, Terra Pass.

Send your electronics to Terra-Cycle. They take your used electronics and turn them into new products. You earn points/money for every item sent in, which can then be donated to the charity or school of your choice! Items accepted include: calculators, cell phones, digital cameras, GPS systems, inkjet printer cartridges, keyboards and mouse, laptop computers, and mp3 players.

Find more info on e-cycling here.

Learn about the latest green gadgets here.

Calculate how much it costs to power all your electronic devices here.

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