Tips to help become an eco-friendly designer
Posted on Sunday 18th November, 2007 by James Young | 2 comments
These days there’s all sorts of things you can do to help reduce your impact on the environment and this post aims to try and give you 10 small tips to try and reduce your impact on the environment without losing any time or efficiency in your workflow.
It’s aimed mainly at designers such as myself who work from home but many things can be scaled up if you’re working in an office environment where you can also pass along these tips to your colleagues to help out even more.
1. Save paper!
I know, it’s an obvious one but I don’t think printing documents is going away any time soon so next time you need to print out something, please consider printing 2 pages per sheet. It’s easy to set your printer to do this by clicking “Properties - Page Layout - Multi Page”
You can print out borders around each page so it’s easier to separate content. It’s barely any less readable than one page per sheet and with one small change, you halve the amount of paper you’re using when printing.
2. Making the office brew
As a designer/developer, I’m going to take a wild guess that you drink lots of tea or coffee during the day….
Next time you make your brew, only fill the kettle with enough water to make the drink you want. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen a kettle filled to the very top just to make one drink. It doesn’t save you huge amounts of electricity or water but it does save some and it’s no extra effort to get into this habit!
3. If it’s not in use right now, turn it off
If you’re at home, turn off the lights in the rooms you’re not in.
If you’re in an office, do the same, meeting rooms nobody is using don’t need big strip or spot lights on all day.
Same goes for computers, don’t leave it on all night when you’re not there. Why not also try powering down if you go out for lunch. Your machine isn’t in use and you’re not there and it’s not like they take hours to boot up when you’re back. Even if you don’t switch your machine off, at least turn off your monitor while you take a break.
4. Plant a tree
As someone who sits behind a computer all day, and hosts sites on racks of servers, you’re burning through a lot of energy. It’s not something that can really be helped but by planting a tree (or several) you can at least start trying to offset your carbon footprint! You can plant a tree today through any number of companies found on google. One such example is PATT
5. Cycle or take public transport to work or meetings
It may not be as quick or direct as driving but both are more environmentally friendly. If you’re used to the car and really don’t like the idea of slumming it on the bus or train, take a book. It’s a good time to just switch off and read a novel or catch up on some reading you wouldn’t otherwise get to do if you drove.
6. Recycle and refill your printer cartridges
Simple and to the point, it saves you money and it uses less resources than ordering new ones each time. A quick google search will show you tons of services.
7. Use a lower energy palette
I must admit I’m a little dubious about all the claims of the black google post and the use of an Emergy-C web palette I guess there’s harm in trying to consider such small design changes for clients where it’s appropriate. Obviously not everyone wants a garish black, red and green christmas style website but there are small considerations you can make when offering up new designs.
Add you own suggestions in the comments
I’m trying to make a simple list of easy, small changes you can make at home or in the office so if you’ve got any ideas and suggestions, please feel free to add them in the comments and this article can be updated regularly.
Some good suggestions. Here’s some more:
- As well as printing two pages to a side, you can also print double sided easily with most printers these days
- Make sure you use recycled, chlorine free paper
- Fair trade/organic tea and coffee
- Electronic invoices
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