7 Tech Tips to Go More 'Green' for Earth Day

This is your blog post. Blogs are a great way to connect with your audience and keep Hey Everyone!For Earth Day and even after the holiday, there are some steps you can take around your home and in your daily life to conserve energy and help contribute to a healthy environment. Here are some suggestions I have to be "eco-friendly" and help our mother Earth.

1.Use rechargeable batteries. To reduce the amount of batteries that wind up in our landfills, consider switching to rechargeable batteries for everything else like flashlights, remote controls and toys. These can be recharged up to a 1000 times and are a much cheaper and eco-friendly alternative.

2. Use LED lightbulbs. Not only will LEDs reduce your electric bills, they're also safer to dispose of and will reduce your carbon footprint. There's no real excuse not to shift to LEDs already.

3. Reduce the brightness on your monitors. Cutting your monitor or laptop's screen brightness might seem like a minor thing to do, but the energy savings will add up over time. For desktops, this is easily done by lowering brightness with the help of the menu buttons on the monitor. For laptops, you need to use the "Function" buttons on your keyboard.

4. Don't use screensavers. If you use screensavers, disable them and just switch off the monitor instead.

5. Smartphone power mangement. For smartphones, you can cut down on display brightness from the notification area itself. You can also configure your phone's power management settings to extend battery life. Simply choose the profile you want to use: balanced, performance, or power saving. Some phones provide detailed options within each of these where you can force the device to shut off mobile data, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth when the phone is inactive. These tweaks will help in extending your phone's battery life and reduce energy consumption.

6. Use programmable timer switches and thermostats. Ever forgotten to switch off the lights before you've left home? Need to have your thermostat turn off at a specific time? If yes, you might want to consider programmable timer switches that can be used to switch appliances ON and OFF at pre-selected times and programmable thermostats that will allow you to control the temperature at home while you're away.

7. Dispose of your e-waste responsibly. Dumping your electronics and gadgets directly in the trash bin is hazardous to the environment. Harmful chemicals from electronics buried in the landfills could seep into ­ and poison ­water systems.

You can take your old e-waste to Goodwill or Best Buy to be recycled responsibly. You can consider selling those old gadgets on Amazon for a trade in towards a new device.How do you try to contribute to a healthy environment? Drop me a line at burton@integralcomputerconsultants.com and let me know