Green Computing — SteemCN

Our computer system consumes a lot of resources and in turn produces a significant amount of carbon over a period of time and resulting in the degradation of our environment. What do we do to stop it? The answer is green computing. What is green computing? Green computing refers to the designing, manufacturing, using and disposing of computer resources to cause minimal impact on the environment. What is the goal of Green Computing? The primary goal of green computing is to minimise the use of hazardous materials in computers, maximising the efficiency of computer resources and promoting the recyclability of computer products.

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History of Green Computing

There is a program called “Energy Star”, that started in 1992 by U.S Govt. Protection Agency to promote the energy efficient devices and computer resources. To gain more success with this program, it was revised in 2006 and some more stricter rules are proposed and implemented. There are a lot of organisations that promoted green computing and environment friendly usage of resources. Some of them includes The Green Grid, Climate Savers Computing Initiatives, The Green Electronic council and more.

Why Green Computing is important?

As we all know the amount of Carbon Dioxide (CO2) is increasing day by day that is causing global climate change. Our computer systems are one of the causes to release more CO2 in the environment. According to Inhabitat.com, a single google search is equivalent to turning on a 60W light bulb for 17 seconds. It may seem a very small amount of energy but when millions and billions of people use it it becomes a huge amount. This is just one example, there are millions of sites out there and think about the emissions that they cause each day. It becomes very important to go for green computing and use your computer resources efficiently.

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Approaches to Green Computing

Power Supply and Resource Usage : Go and check your power supplier specifications and how efficient and environment friendly the power supply is. You can also setup your own solar panels to power up your house and computer. It just need some initial investments but its worth it. It will definitely help in the reduction of CO2 emission. Always switch off your computer system and other devices when not in use. It will not only improve your computer life but will also help in the Global Green Movement.

Latest Technologies and Resources : If you are buying a new computer make sure you purchase your computer with specs of latest technologies like LED displays, latest generation processors, SSDs and more. It may initially cost more but think about the long term usage and its impact on the environment.

Cloud Computing : If you are working on a project where you need to work remotely but you need some heavy resources then instead of buying a high end laptop or local servers go with cloud computing. There are a lot of Cloud providers like Google, Amazon and more. It will not only help in green movement your workflow will be much faster.

Green Disposal : If you want a new computer, first think about upgrading your old computer and if even then it’s not enough then go for the computer as mentioned above with the latest technologies. You must dispose your old computer in green fashion like selling it to a vendor and if no one is buying then just give it to charity or contact your locals for its disposals. There are a lot of green campaigns going on you can talk with them to get more info.

Blackle Search : Instead of using Google’s native version to search use the blackle here at blackle.com . The implementation is in dark mode to save screen energy. It is a small but great step to green computing.