We know and understand that you need all your gadgets in order to run your home based business successfully. Your computers and scanners may seem important now, but they are driving up your electric bills and impacting the environment negatively.
Businesses everywhere are making a noticeable effort to become more eco-friendly and energy efficient, and home-based businesses should also follow suit. Implementing energy safety features and practices in your home office can help to reduce your energy usage, as well as reduce your carbon footprint.
If you are serious about making your domestic working environment more eco-friendly, below are some energy saving trends for 2018 that you can implement in your home office:
Use electricity monitors
To start the journey towards a more eco-friendly home office, you must first figure out which of your devices is consuming the most energy. Electricity monitors that are plugged in can identify how much electricity each of your devicesconsumes. Hopefully, you can start to make the changes needed to lower your energy use.
Power strips work
We are all guilty of leaving our devices plugged in even when it is unnecessary. Saving energy can be as effortless as unplugging your appliances when they are not being used. Surprisingly, even when your devices are turned off but still plugged in, energy is still being consumed or rather wasted. Plugging your gadgets into a power strip is the best way to avoid wasting energy.
Ditch the PC
If you have to choose, use your laptop instead of your PC. Laptops consume up to 80% less energy compared to PCs.
Try Energy Efficient Ethernet
Energy Efficient Ethernets are designed to lower the amount of power consumed on your local area network particularly when there is little data activity. Energy Efficient Ethernets (EEE) can reduce energy consumption by half or more while retaining complete compatibility with your devices.
Change old light bulbs
One of the easiest ways to automatically guarantee that your home office is green is by switching your standard bulbs for more energy efficient ones. Not only do energy efficient bulbs last longer, they also use 25 to 80 % less energy compared to traditional bulbs, and they shine brighter too.
Only buy Energy Star Devices
The next time you are in the market for a new tablet, laptop or scanner for your home office, make sure that you only purchase an Energy Star rated product. Energy Star products are specially designed so that they use less energy than standard models, which ultimately improves your energy efficiency.