Please help Ithaca College conserve energy, save money, and lighten our collective "carbon footprint" during the upcoming holiday break. Here are some tips on how you can do your part to reduce College electricity waste.Please help Ithaca College conserve energy, save money, and lighten our collective "carbon footprint" during the upcoming holiday break. Here are some tips on how you can do your part to reduce College electricity waste.
Before you leave your office for the holiday break:
1) Turn off your computer, monitor, and audio speakers. If these are all plugged into a power strip, eliminate "phantom load" by switching off the power strip as well! This is a good habit to get into -- not just at break periods, but every night and certainly over the weekend! It doesn't hurt your computer to turn it off; modern computer equipment doesn't require much energy to turn on, and it saves much more energy to have the equipment turned off when not in use. In addition, switching off and rebooting your network-connected equipment on a daily basis actually helps the College by allowing ITS to update your programs and run virus scans.
(2) Switch off all office copiers, network or desktop printers, fax machines, research equipment, and any other noncritical electric equipment.
(3) Turn off all overhead or task lighting. Yes, the facilities staff may come in after you leave, but they do know where the light switches are.
(4) Please, please make sure any strings of holiday lights you turned on are turned off! 'Tis the season to be jolly, but it's also the season to be energy efficient.
(5) Make sure your under-desk heater is turned off and unplugged. Better yet, take it home and leave it home in January. Help support the College's thermostat "set-point" policy. Bring in a sweater instead.
(6) If you're the last one out of your area: after you turn off the overhead lights, take a quick look around for any little glowing green, orange, or yellow lights still turned on. While these little winking lights may look seasonally festive, it really means the equipment is still running, and thus drawing electricity. If it's not critical that particular piece of equipment stay on, please turn it off.
Happy holidays to you all. Believe me, the good folks in Facilities will have a MUCH happier holiday knowing we're all doing our part to reduce electricity waste.
https://www.ithaca.edu/intercom/article.php/20101217134510307