No Brainer Options for a more Sustainable Planet

Welcome back to "No Brainer Options for a more Sustainable Planet." In this series we discuss high impact, low cost sustainability measures which are applicable on an individual basis, in a household, in a commercial interior space, retail space, building portfolio, etc. In the first installment, we covered installing low-flow faucet aerators and fighting vampire power. In this installment, we will cover setting default settings. Why are default settings important? Well, let's start off with the classic printer setting option of double-sided versus single-sided pages. The office where everyone prints double-sided should theoretically use 50% as much paper, have roughly 50% less paper waste, result in 50% less carbon emissions from trucking paper around and result in saving many more trees than the office that prints exclusively single-sided. This sounds great. The thing is, who can remember to select the print double-sided option every time they go to print? I know I do for about 24 hours after I've printed an 80-page report single-sided. Instead, why not take five minutes and make double-sided printing the default for everyone. In the event a document needs to be single-sided, the user can adjust settings before they print. Another default printing setting to consider is "print to PDF." With this setting, no one can print anything hardcopy by accident (you know, like a color hard-copy chapter of a textbook - not that this has ever happened in my office before...) Additional default settings to consider are: 1. PC desktop computers and laptops - in the control panel, select power options and set computer to go to standby after 15 minutes (rather than screen saver), and the monitor and hard disks to shut off after 20 minutes 2. Mac desktop computers and laptops - in system preferences, hardware, select Energy Saver and select the available energy saving options 3. Tablets and notebooks - in settings, you can adjust the amount of time before the table/notebook goes to sleep 4. Printers - Make sure printer is set to go into "energy saver" sleep mode when not in use Once default settings are in place, there is zero brainpower required to maintain these efforts. For organizations that are responsible for the purchase and upkeep of a large numbers of electronics, default requirements can be incorporated into the organization's specifications / plans & policies. This small effort can result in achieving substantial reductions in paper waste, energy usage and subsequently carbon emissions. Stay tuned for the next installment of No Brainer Options for a more Sustainable Planet. 'Til then! Melissa Wrolstad, LEED AP ID+C, BD+C, is a project manager, CodeGreen Solutions, New York, N.Y.