1. Designer's Guide to Reducing Your
Carbon Footprint
Seven Simple Steps to Help the Environment
by Rob Erskine

2. 1.Turn Off The Computer
 While this may seem obvious to
some, it's amazing how few follow
through with such an easy step.
Most of us leave the computer on
24/7 due to the
convenience, however turning off
the computer at night saves a huge
amount of power. While you're at
it, might as well turn off the sound
system and corresponding monitor
hooked up to your setup as well.

3. 2. Turn Off External Hard Drives at
Night
 I know that I often run backups
at night while I'm asleep on my
mac. More recently however, I
have been running backups at
hourly intervals and never notice
any resource consumption. This
is an alternative that can save a
lot of power.

4. 3. Use http://www.blackle.com/
 Blackle is a search engine that
is exactly like Google in every
way, except for the fact that it is
predominately black. The theory
behind Blackle is that it takes
more energy to portray white (lit)
pixels on monitors than it is to
portray the default black pixels.
Black estimates that it saves
750,000 hours of watts of energy
a year from their users.

5. 4. Switch to LCD Monitor
LCD's save more energy and
make so much less heat than
competing CRT monitors. LCD
monitors also take up a lot less
room and require less overall
power. Also, what web designer
and developer doesn't need an
excuse to upgrade a monitor?

6. 5. Use an Eco-Friendly Font
 The makers of Ecofont remove
small parts of characters in order
to save ink. An estimated 20% of
ink is saved per page by using
such an indifferent font.

7. 6. Make Sites Printer Friendly
 While many of us laugh at the
thought of printing out
websites, many people still do.
In order to make printer friendly
versions of elaborate and
colorful websites, most
designers use a separate style
sheet.
 <link rel="stylesheet"
type="text/css" href="print.css"
media="print" />
 “print” is where the magic
happens

8. 7. Don't Use A Screen Saver
 Back in the day, screen savers
were implemented to keep idle
images from burning into the
screen.
 This isn't the case anymore
however, as LCD monitors can
not have images burned into
pixels anymore. So try and save
some energy and turn off your
idle computer instead of having
a screen saver