The Green Room

Reducing laptop energy emissions

By Walmart Green Room on March 20, 2013 Leave a comment

We all know some of the ways to bring sustainability into our homes, whether by recycling, eating locally grown foods, or buying energy saving appliances. So, when we think about what to stock on our shelves, we want to make in-home sustainability even easier by providing our customers with the option of purchasing the most sustainable products possible, no matter what category.

Since laptops are a hub for work and play in so many homes, optimizing their efficiency was a natural goal. We know that the best way to save energy when using a laptop is to make sure the screen and system is shut down when it’s not in use. To meet Energy Star requirements, a laptop’s display screen must shut down within 15 minutes of no activity and the computer system should enter sleep mode after 30 minutes. But we wanted to see if we could go beyond the default settings to save even more energy.

Using the Sustainability Index and research from The Sustainability Consortium, our buyer discovered that laptops with advanced power management tools use less energy. Yet only 30 percent of the laptops Walmart sold came from manufacturers with the optimal settings set as default. We knew we could do better. So, we began working with our manufacturers to ensure laptops’ default settings would be set to turning off the display after five minutes and the system after 10 minutes. Currently, we’re on track to have all of the laptops we sell optimized to this setting by the end of the year.

By making these changes, the energy savings equate to the amount of greenhouse gas emissions that 22,471 average American homes emit a year through electricity consumption. It just goes to show that even though these changes might seem small, when you add them up they can make a big difference.

Have you checked your laptop’s settings lately?