Do you turn your computer and peripherals off when you leave for the day?   If everyone would turn his or her computer and peripherals off when they leave, it could save a significant amount of money and, at the same time, help make this a greener world by reducing our carbon footprint.

Catawba County urges employees to shut their computer down when they leave for the day, unless the computer is tied to other crucial services or needs to stay on for maintenance purposes. This is an expectation of all employees.  We encourage you to adopt the same practice.

While our employees shut their computer down every day, Catawba County will be participating in the National Association of Counties, “Power IT Down Day” on August 27, 2009.  NACo, along with its partners, is asking that counties participate in this nationwide initiative.  More information is included below about the savings that could be realized when this is done on a nationwide basis.

So what do you need to do if you would like to participate?  If you shut your computer and peripherals down every day, you just need to sign up for the program at the Power IT Down Day  web site and continue shutting down as normal.  If you have not been shutting your computer down every day, please make this part of your daily routine and visit the Power IT Down Day web site to sign up to participate on August 27th.

Thank you for helping Catawba County save energy and the environment.

The National Association of Counties is sponsoring “Power IT Down Day” on August 27, 2009

On a single day this summer, county governments across the country could dramatically slash energy consumption costs with the flick of a switch.

On August 27, 2009, the most trusted names in green IT will join together for the second year to make a change for the better with “Power IT Down Day.” Citrix, along with Hewlett-Packard, Intel and Microsoft, has committed to switching off personal computers and peripherals when leaving the office for the evening on August 27 and have challenged all levels of government to do the same.

Last year, over 2,800 government and industry employees pledged to power down their computers, printers and monitors on Power IT Down Day - a one-day savings of over 37,000 kilowatt-hours.

If only one percent of county governments’ 2.9 million employees (source: 2007 Census) participated in Power IT Down Day, more than 380,000 kilowatt-hours could be saved. That comes to an energy cost-savings of more than $38,000 in a single night.

Power IT Down Day encourages government to embrace responsible energy usage at the individual level. And, inspired by the cost-savings generated by Power IT Down Day, Citrix and our green IT partners plan to donate more than $20,000 to the Wounded Warrior Project.

 As a practice and as part of our Green Initiatives, Catawba County recommends that all computers and peripherals that are not performing a function be shut down when the employee leaves for the day. We will use “Power IT Down Day” to remind our staff that their computers should be shut down every day when they leave work or are going to be away from their desk for an extended period of time.

 To sign up and learn more about green IT in government, staff will be encouraged to visit the Power IT Down Day Web site.

Last week I attended a meeting about Green Initiatives.  The discussion started with what Catawba County is doing now to promote “Green” and I think we should be very proud of things that came out in the discussion.  For a current list, you can go to http://www.catawbacountync.gov/greena.asp.

Next we discussed carbon footprint.  From WIKIPEDIA - A carbon footprint is “the total set of GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions caused directly and indirectly by an individual, organization, event or product”.  For more information and resources about carbon footprints, you can visit the Green Team Blog on our website.

So what is my carbon footprint? Following the links on the Green Team Blog, it led me to www.carbonfootprint.com .  Using their calculator, my carbon footprint for the year is 27 tonnes, a little higher than the 20.5 tonne average in the US.  Not sure why except that I really got a lot of negative points for driving a 10 year old car.  There are a number of ways to offset the footprint so maybe the trees I planted last summer will help.

But this is a technology blog and the survey didn’t ask me about my computer and all the tech gadgets that we Americans carry around.  How do they add into the carbon footprint formula?  Doing searches using my favorite search engines did not reveal much about the carbon footprint of my computer or my Blackberry but it did reveal that every search I performed created between 0.2 grams to 0.7 grams of CO2.  That’s a big range and highly disputed but the fact is, every search you do on the Internet adds CO2 to the atmosphere.  Scientist do agree that power and cooling requirements for data centers in the US contribute about the same amount of CO2 as the airline industry.  That is a fact that I found surprising.

For all of you with mobile devices like Blackberrys and IPhones, there is an application that will actually keep track of your carbon footprint as you move around day to day.  A UK company has created a mobile phone application called Carbon Diem that uses GPS to track your carbon footprint. The GPS tracks the speed you’re moving at, and from that information, the software figures out if you’re walking, driving or in a train or airplane, and estimates fuel use accordingly.

Whatever technology you use, the point here is, we all generate a lot of CO2.  That’s the bad news, the good news is there are ways to offset the amount of CO2 that we generate.  Watch our web page, especially the Green Team Blog, to find out ways you can make a difference.

Green is the “IN” color this year.  It seems everyone is talking about ways to conserve energy and our natural resources.  And we should be talking about conservation.  Energy usage is at an all time high and so are the costs associated with energy.  It is up to all of us to do our part and IT is a good place to start.

So what can one person do?  As an individual, it seems whatever we do will not make a difference.  But let’s apply Web 2.0 concepts of collaboration, community, openness, and trust to the effort.  By sharing green practices with all our friends we build that community and by being open and trusting with the community, it will in turn respond with other green practices that we can use.  Using the power of working together, all of the little things we do add up and can have a huge impact on the resources that we are now consuming.

Below are some small ways that you can change IT habits to save energy.  Please share these with your friends and colleagues and let’s watch the solution grow.  They work at home or at work so share them everywhere.  If you have other suggestions, please pass them back to me in an email or the comments section of this page.  Together, we can make a difference.

My Green IT Checklist:

1.    Unplug phone chargers, iPod chargers, GPS chargers and other chargers when not in use.   Each of this type of charger continues to drain small amounts of energy even if the device is not plugged into them.  If you don’t want the bother of unplugging them, hook them all to a power bar and turn it off when you are not charging equipment.

2.    Turn off you computer if you are going to be away for an extended time.  Especially, overnight.  In the past, you may have been instructed to leave your computer on overnight, mainly to avoid signing back on the network the next time you used it.  We no longer need to think this way.  Actually, shutting the computer down properly and then bringing it back up has advantages.  So turn it off when you are not using it.

3.    Turning the computer off saves energy but don’t forget everything attached to it.  Be sure to turn off the monitor, the speakers, the printer, the scanner, and even the paper shredder.  A good test is to look back into the room after you turn the lights out.  If you see any LCDs, you may need to turn it off.

4.    Don’t be a “Virtual Packrat”. Don’t store something just because you can.  Data storage has become very cheap to buy, however, it takes energy to store and maintain data.  When you read something on the Internet, don’t store it because you may use it again in the future.  This is especially true at work where your data may be stored on network drives.  Power consumption for data centers has been increasing at an alarming rate and storing something just because you can, requires more hard drive space and thus more energy.

5.    Don’t print just because you can. Most information that you have on your computer can be read just as well on the screen. Think before you print and ask yourself the question, “Do I really need a paper copy?”

6.    If you are a presenter and usually give your audience a copy of your presentation, think about using a web service like SlideShare.net .  They can view the actual presentation and if you want, give them permission to download and view.  YouTube works great for videos and Flickr for photos.  The web gives you a great place to store information and a great place for your participants to view it without printing it.  Please remind your participants that they should avoid becoming the virtual packrats, they can read it online so don’t worry about storing and printing a copy.

7.    Be sure your computer monitor and hard drive are set to sleep mode after 15 minutes.  This is an easy step that costs nothing.  Refer to your manual for this.

8.    Speaking of the monitor, if you are still using a CRT monitor, replace it with a new LCD monitor.  This costs less to run and you will gain space on the desktop.

9.    Check energy consumption on all purchases.  When buying any technology look beyond the price and look at the continuing cost of ownership.  One computer may be priced attractively but consume a lot more energy for the same processing power.

10. Technology has become part of our lives but remember, at times you need to turn it all off and enjoy time without it.