E-Waste: UK Businesses Blow Tons of Cash

According to recent figures, UK businesses blew nearly $90 million in excess electricity bills last year. The reason was the simple failure to switch PCs off at the end of the day. According to UK Government figures, a computer that is continuously left on uses up to $100 more electricity a year than a PC that is switched off when not in use. This amounts to 50 percent of the average company’s annual electricity bill.

At a time when businesses are having to cut costs and look at new ways of gaining advantage over competitors, they should be keeping a tight lid on operational costs. And yet UK companies are burning their profits on something as simple as turning PCs off. But, it’s not just the waste of money that should concern businesses; it is the unnecessary CFC emissions that are expelled. The same PC switched on 24 hours a day will emit up to one ton of carbon dioxide in a year. If we continue to ignore this situation the CFC emissions from these idle PCs are estimated to rise to a colossal $3.7 million tons a year by 2020.

Even the Government has taken note and has introduced new tax concessions for environmental business practices. It is concerned about the gravity of wasted natural resources and ignorant pollution of the UK. With these concessions in place it is time that business managers take responsibility.

There are two very simple solutions. The first is for employees to take responsibility and ensure that they power down their PCs completely at the end of each day. But statistics show that even with a company log-off policy in place, at least 20 percent of employees will still fail to shut down each night. The second solution is for employers to take responsibility, even if it is purely for financial rather than environmental gain.

There are solutions out there that will automatically shut down PCs at the end of each day and these only cost a few dollars per PC. When the solution is apparently this simple and economy is so depressed, it is baffling why more companies don’t do something about needless energy waste.