How to be a Green Technology Geek

Being a Technology geek and trying to live an environmentally friendly and ethically responsible life often seem mutually exclusive. For instance, I recycle heavily, I have two compost bins, two water butts, I buy environmentally friendly products, I run low energy light-bulbs in every room at home, I use Solar Powered chargers to give new life to rechargeable batteries, I get my electricity from a Green provider, I run an Electrisave to monitor my electricity usage, and annoyingly to seemingly everyone I meet – I wander around turning off room lights, monitors and printers I see left switched on un-necessarily. But on the other hand, I run a bunch of servers rammed with power-hungry Hard Disk Drives 24/7, and a whole heap of gadgets, media equipment and mobile devices that gobble up electricity like it’s going out of fashion.

So researching into how to save energy whilst still being a heavy user of technology is something of a passion of mine (and a really good subject for impressing ladies during conversation, trust me…)

I use rechargeable batteries in just about every gadget I own as this is an effective way of powering them without continuously buying new batteries and discarding to landfill your used batteries, and so found this blog article by Jeff Atwood on how to use rechargeable batteries effectively fascinating. It explains the differences between the different types of rechargeable batteries out there, how they really work, and how you can get the most life from them.

And before you say, yes, I’m fully appreciative of how geeky everything I’ve just written reads – but I’m completely and absolutely unashamed of that fact. 🙂