Legal Commentary

A guest post from Shawnna Childress, of Navigant Consulting (and Women in eDiscovery):

The name of the game in 2009 is ???Saving Money???.  Going Green is a natural answer to saving your firm or corporation thousands.  Particularly in the United States, saving money on energy costs is the primary motivating factor causing corporations to ramp up their Green IT initiatives.

Overseas, we are seeing corporations going green to improve their brand???s image. It is the ???cool??? thing to do in Europe.

Here are a few simple things you can do to become Green and affect your bottom line:

1)       Switch off your computer when leaving the office (The average computer electricity costs $150 on the low-end to $450 on the high-end to run each year.  You can easily save $300 per year per computer if you turn your computer off at night.  Here is the actual math if you want to get down to the true mathematics of the equation.).

2)       Even better, use a power strip to plug in all your equipment and pull the plug each night (this confirms that not even the smallest amount of electricity is being used in your office while you are away).

3)       Better yet, you could buy a ???Smart Strip??? for around $30. This special power strip monitors electricity use in each plug and shuts off the ones that have been idle for a period of time.

4)       Print double-sided (imagine how much $$ you???ll save in paper costs).

5)       Set your computers on energy-savings settings

6)       If you're going to be away from your desk for more than 15 minutes, turn off your computer monitor. Monitors easily use over half of the total energy used to run a computer. (Please note that screen savers do not save any energy so it is better to put your computer in ???sleep??? or ???stand-by??? mode with a blank screen while away. Unfortunately, it takes just as much energy to make your screen saver shoot stars at you as it does to run a word processing program.)

7)       Choose a laptop over a desktop when possible.  Laptop computers use up to 90% less energy than desktop computers.

8)       Consolidate your Servers.

9)       Set up Virtual Servers so multiple offices can use the same server.

10)   Fix your in-house data center leaks???unfortunately almost everyone has them (i.e. clean coils, clean ducts, make sure the thermostats are installed in an effective area, make sure your valves are not failing, check your cooling systems to confirm that the right amount of coolant is coming out, etc???)

11)   Practice proper disposal and recycling of technology (One idea???give your old company cell phones to a Domestic Violence Shelter.  To call 911, cell phones don???t need a subscription to a service; therefore, they give the inactive cell phones to their female clients so they can call 911 as needed.) 

If you have more Green ideas your firm or corporation has put into practice, please let us know by commenting on this article.