Bryan Ward in his environmentally friendly Scion

Electronic waste and its toxic materials, including lead and mercury from old computers, is globally the fastest growing type of waste being sent to landfills—posing a potentially toxic hazard for people, animals and the environment. So, in the spirit of ‘green’ awareness, here are some easy tips to help you maintain environmentally friendly computers—and save a little money in the process.

Rock-a-bye baby
• Set a sleep time for your PC with a five-minute shut-off mode and switch your computer off during nights and weekends. The standby power of a computer monitor costs only about $3 a year when the computer is shut down nights and weekends. However, if the computer’s sleep function is used without the shut-off, the power costs approximately $41 a year for those nights and weekends—almost as much as the $57 a year it costs to run the computer just on weekdays. Leaving your computer on unused for 16 minutes exceeds the energy it requires to start it up again.

• Turn off additional components not in use and draining energy, such as printers, scanners, photocopiers, phone chargers, etc.

• Stop leaking power by unplugging all unused electronics.

Lighten Up
• Flat-panel displays typically use one-third of the power of the old-style and bulky monitors made with cathode ray tubes or CRTs.

Save That Tree
• Go as paper-free as possible. Print double-sided when possible. Store e-mails and documents on the hard drive rather than printing out and filing, and save Web sites as PDFs.

Donate and Upgrade
• Consumer electronics contain toxic materials, such as lead, that can seep into the ground if not disposed of properly. Donate your old computer and other electronic gadgets to a local charity or organizations that refurbish them for schools. Also, you can recycle your electronics at government collection agencies or by returning them to the original manufacturer or vendor.

•Two simple and inexpensive ways to upgrade an old computer are by adding more RAM and reducing the number of start-up programs.

Bryan Ward is co-founder and president of Friendly Computers, one of the country’s largest onsite retail and computer repair franchises. www.friendlycomputers.com.