By Adam Smith, Environmental Marketing Manager,
HP

Earlier this year, I set my self the
challenge of reducing my personal environmental impact at home and at work. I
started with the simple things like replacing the light bulbs at home with
compact flourescent bulbs, bringing a reusable water bottle into the office
rather than using disposable plastic cups and making sure my office printer was
set to duplex mode. Then I began to look further afield and realized that I
spend about 10 hours a day using a particular electric powered device – my HP
notebook.

The notebook I have, an HP Compaq 6510b, is
Energy Star qualified meaning HP has already done much of the work to make it
energy efficient. HP Energy Star qualified products use about half as much
electricity to run as non-Energy Star qualified products. They also
automatically go into “sleep” mode after a period of inactivity – so
if I go to a meeting or step away from my home office to make some lunch, my HP
notebook automatically goes to sleep which uses about 75% less energy than in
regular mode. When I return to my desk, I can get back to my work in seconds,
safe in the knowledge that I wasn’t wasting energy while I was away.

It makes me feel good to know that, by using
an energy efficient notebook, I am making a difference in my energy consumption
and thus my environmental impact. It may be small but if we all make small
differences in the things we do every day, it can add up to something big. And
HP has committed to continue to reduce the energy consumption of its products -
the goal is to reduce energy consumption by 25% by 2010 when compared with
products sold in 2005.

I’m currently looking for a new notebook for
use at home – and I’ll definitely be looking for the Energy Star label when I
am searching the HP store.