Computers and monitors can account for half of the electricity used in a typical office. A single monitor left switched on overnight can use the same energy as a laser printer producing 800 A4 printed copies, - and don’t be fooled by a screensaver – the computer is still working at full power to run this!

There are some 10m office PCs in Britain and approximately 20m home PCs. According to a recent study on energy wastage, 1.8m are regularly left on overnight or all weekend. Based on this alone, around 1.5 billion kWh of energy is wasted by computers and monitors being left on in the UK.

Add to this the time a computer is often left running idle during work breaks. We estimate that the average PC is left idle for as much as 30% to 50% of the time the PC is switched. This means that the average PC can easily waste over 100kg of CO2 per year and cost well over £30 in wasted electricity. On a national scale this could add up to 3million tonnes of wasted carbon and almost £1billion in wasted electricity across the UK.

Worldwide these figures are multiplied many times over, ultimately creating a significant negative impact on our local and global environment. We're not going to be able to switch off our computers entirely, but at least by adopting simple power saving policies we can go a long way to preventing so much waste. Devices like ecobutton™ help make waste prevention simple and help to change our energy saving habits.