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ENERGY STAR in Australia
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Energy saving tips

  • Make sure that your equipment is turned off at the powerpoint at night and on weekends, and even during the day when it is not being used for an extended period of time.

  • With your computer, experiment with the delay or default setting to achieve the shortest possible time that it is acceptable before the machine goes to 'sleep'.

  • Consider printer sharing devices such as a manual printer switch that can route jobs to the printer when the switch is set to receive incoming signals from one of two or more computers.

  • Reduce paper consumption by minimising the use of full-page cover sheets for fax transmission. Stick-on labels placed on the first page of the fax message not only reduce the amount of energy and paper used, but can also save on telephone charges.

  • Look for printers with a double-sided printing option.

  • ENERGY STAR compliant fax machines can scan double-sided pages. This will reduce both your copying and paper costs.

  • Purchase a photocopier that's the right size for you. A mid-volume copier installed in a low-volume office can use 70% more energy per page than an efficient low-volume copier.

  • Set your photocopier to automatically default to making one- to two-sided copies to ensure that the duplexing feature is used.

  • Run copies together in batches to reduce energy consumption by decreasing the time your copier spends in high-power mode.

  • Use recycled paper, preferably with at least 20% post-consumer recycled content.

  • Consider using recycled toner cartridges to reduce the flow of solid waste that ends up in the nation's landfills.

Don't forget

Even if your equipment has no energy saving features, you can still save power by switching it off when it's not in use.

With computers, at least switch off the monitor. Some people think switching off is bad for computers and monitors, but it's perfectly safe. And far from wearing-out your computer, switching it off will usually reduce wear and tear on key systems like the hard disk and on the monitor.

Obviously it takes some time to restart a computer that's been switched off, so you will probably only want to do this when you won't be using the computer for several hours. But it's still worth switching off the monitor if the system will be idle for even half an hour.

If the computer has no energy saving features and needs to be left on for some reason (such as waiting for an after-hours backup), you can still turn off the monitor -- which may reduce power consumption by as much as 80%.