An article discusses the environmental impact by every day office equipment.
Understanding the effects on the environment is an important factor of office life and businesses need to understand the impact of their equipment and how to limit the carbon foot print reported Computer World. Many businesses have gone past the “original goal” of saving money on energy bills and are becoming more “Green” in their outlook.
A company’s check list should consist of efficiency, sustainability and carbon footprint, said the article and this means technology purchases should comply with this and the article noted that “it has never been easier”. There are ratings on the energy used by technology and some of companies that do this are Energy Star, EPEAT, Blue Angel and TPC- Energy as well as vendors like HP who have a Carbon Footprint Calculator for printing so that consumers can compare different products. “The Green Grid” are working to “ensure that future generations of IT products are increasingly energy efficient and environmentally friendly”.
Far from energy consumption being the only concern in business there are the materials used in manufacturing products as well as “transportation”, lifespan and “consumption of other supplies and resources” as well as its “end of life recycling potential”.
Design for Environment, (DfE), is a programme that HP release over 20 years ago which has three concerns; “energy efficiency, materials innovation and design for recyclability”.
Proof that DfE works is in the design of the HP PageWide MFPs which are high speed printers using 84percent less energy that other lasers and generating 94 percent less “supplies and packaging waste” than other machines. Companies using these MFPs can reduce their carbon footprint by 55 percent.