Here are my last thoughts for Zero Waste Week, this time focussing on energy savings that you can look at.
- Check your energy meters regularly and look for unusual patterns of energy use.
- Checking energy use overnight or at weekends when a building is supposed to be empty tells you how big your base load is. Check to see what actually runs 24/7.
- If you don’t know how much energy your equipment uses, how will you know how much energy it saves if you turn it off / wastes if you leave it on?
Turn it off!
- It is possible to set your computers, printers and other digital devices to go into ‘sleep’ mode or shut down if they are not in use. Restarting might not take as long as you think.
- Set all your IT equipment to shut down 30 minutes after the working day ends so that nothing can be left on overnight.
- Turning it off at the plug (or physically unplugging it) is better than on the device because the switches on some devices are after the transformer.
- Advances with LED technology mean that it might be cost effective to replace lighting installed as recently as 5 years ago.
- Modern LED lighting can be connected to light and motion detectors so that your lights can fade when the sun comes out / become brighter if it is cloudy and also check to see if there anyone there.
- Check that the lights are off when you leave at night. If you can remember to pick up your phone or to lock a door, you can learn to turn off the lights too.