6 Eco Tech Ways You Can Save Money in Your Modern Business Operations

As we’ve always known, technology has huge scope to save both consumers and businesses time and money.

Here are 6 eco tech ways that you can do just that.

3D Printers

3D printers are environmentally friendly in the sense that the base materials have already been distributed in an efficient manner to the location of the printer.

Even if the printer is fabricating just a one part that is urgently needed, that saves an expensive trip that has to be taken at short notice to deliver a non-3D printed part.

An good example is the International Space Station which now has a 3D printer.

The printer is not only there to help out with experiments and problems on the space station, it’s the beginning of a manufacturing facility in space! Imagine a future base for Mars or the Moon not being manufactured on Earth, but in space.

Getting our feet back on Earth, instead of ordering everyday items on the internet, households and businesses will simply be able to fabricate such items locally, saving time and money.

Of course, how quickly such a printer can pay for itself, depends on the value of the items that are being fabricated. If it’s just cheap household items, then it would take years for the printer to pay for itself, but more expensive items would see the printer pay for itself within months.

Also, there is always online 3D printing services. For larger items or items that are being fabricated in bulk, an online 3D printing service might be the better way to go so is worth investigating.

Adapt to Business LED and CFL lighting

LED and CFL lighting doesn’t use much power compared to traditional lighting and offers much longer life spans.

Not only are savings made on lower energy usage, but also in the saved time from not having to change them so often, thanks to their lifespan of about 20 years.

LEDs are don’t contain any toxic materials and are 100% recyclable and don’t generate any heat. With normal lighting, the air conditioning would waste energy cooling down such heat.

Unlike fluorescent tubes, LED lights can be dimmed and also switched on and off instantly, offering huge savings on larger setups that aren’t used so much, instantly dimming down or switching off when people aren’t around.

Lighting Experts at MyLEDLIghtingGuide.com say 

“Where the big savings can be made with LEDs, is on the high bay fixtures, lighting up huge indoor areas such as warehouses, hangars, factories and gyms, however, many consumers and smaller businesses make the mistake of assuming that such lighting is incompatible with older light fittings, when in fact they can easily be retrofitted to older light fittings.”

“With LEDs costs are returned in 2 to 3 years and furthermore, the business is better protected from rising energy costs.”

Use Programmable Thermostat

Programmable thermostats will change to the desired temperature on the premises regardless of the outside temperature or the number of people, if any, in each room.

Furthermore, during periods where it’s known the premises are definitely shut altogether, the thermostat can programmed to switch the heating off altogether.

Shop around for a utility company with a tariff that suits you

Many utility tariffs have peak and off peak usage, obviously with off-peak being cheaper.

Ensure that your business has an energy consumption policy optimised for such a tariff, ensuring that everyone on the site knows of the policy and the hours of operation.

Make sure all the desktop and laptop PCs have the right power settings.

In the BIOS settings all the desktop computers need to be set so that they don’t come back on after a power failure. Imagine if you had a powercut in an office with more than 10 PCs. Would you really want them all coming back on at the same time?

If too many PCs try to boot after the first power failure...you could have a second!

To hibernate or suspend?

Both hibernating and suspending PCs rather than shutting them down completely saves time for their users.

The main reason why many users leave their PCs switched on at night, is so that in the morning they can resume with their work completely rather than having to boot up.

Hibernation is all about saving the memory to the hard-disk then shutting down, while suspending would keep the PC going but with the bare minimum power to keep everything in volatile memory.

Hibernation is definitely more environmentally friendly, as it’s not using any power, however using the suspend function is quicker.

When NOT to hibernate:

1. When the PC is for a “power user” and has a large amount of RAM….all of that RAM would have to be written to the hard-disk. It would take a bit too long and would cause wear and tear. In such cases better to use “suspend”.
2. When the PC has a single SSD hard disk, without a conventional hard disk. Writes cause wear to an SSD and it’s not good to write to it every day, just with a hibernation image. Better to have such PCs go into suspend rather than shutting down.  

Migrate to the cloud

Migrating servers to the cloud saves you having to commission on-site servers that are nowhere near as efficient as cloud servers.

Better for the environment and overall cheaper to run because an efficient operation at a huge datacenter takes care of the maintenance of the servers.

Cut down on paper waste

People are addicted to printing everything out for the filing cabinets or even just to read for reference. Monitor your printer use and work with employees to cut down on printing.

Not only does it save on paper, but also toner, replacement parts and the lifespan of the printer itself.

Technology and savings

It pays to get into the mindset to always review the operations of a business with a view to constantly finding ways of outsourcing resources to services on the internet.

Technology from lighting, heating to waste production is always evolving and offering new ways to save money and energy.