Many more people are working at home than ever before. Modern technology it has made it possible for many of us to do away the need to commute to the office, which is not only advantageous to us, but it benefits the environment too. By working at home we are also helping to alleviate the congestion that many of our cities and towns experience during rush hour.

Technology has also benefited the environment by allowing us to do many transactions over the Internet, doing away with the need to travel and allowing us to conference and communicate without the need to add to our carbon footprints.

But working, at home still requires energy and much of what we do when we are working can affect the environment in other ways too: paper we print out and computers left on for hours and hours all have a detrimental effect on the environment, but there is much we can do to lessen the environmental impact of working at home even more.

Email Don’t Print

Many documents that we send by post can be sent over the Internet and by email.

Even documents that have to be signed can be emailed and more and more companies are accepting official documentation this way.

All that is required is basic software that is often freely available on the Internet, such as PDF makers, and word processing software – that most of us have already.

Even hard copy documents that we have to sign can be scanned in an emailed – doing away with the need to post them.

Use power saving modes

Because computers can take quite a long time to boot up, many of us leave them on for quite long periods of time, even when we are not using them.

The consequence of this is that we are burning energy for no reason and contributing to the amount of CO2 being pumped into the atmosphere.

Most computers do have power saving modes and although it can be easy to forget eco-buttons are available that can do the job for you. They power down your computer to energy saving mode which allows it to be booted up in only a few seconds, rather than have to wait for a full reboot.

A standby saving device is also a good idea to ensure your monitor, printer and other devices are not left on standby when your PC is off, often many of these devices can remain on and consume quite large quantities of energy whilst doing nothing.