What is “Green Computing”? What we are looking for are products that minimal or zero impact on the environment from manufacture to disposal.
Over the past few years, legislators and manufacturers have been working on ways of reducing the environmental impact of computing. In the UK, the “right to repair” law was introduced on 8th July 2022. This essentially prevents manufactures from creating inbuilt obsolescence in their products.
This is welcome news for school technicians. These skilled band of eco-warriors have for many years been replacing components in PC & Laptops in order to extend the life of equipment in their schools. However, they have become increasingly frustrated with the design of products and their lack of repair options.
Buying decisions
Value for money has always been a key driving force for purchases in education. But should we now be taking the environmental impact into account for purchases? If so, here are some thoughts for you.
Screencast app on Chrome OS
With the new Screencast app built into Chrome OS, teachers can record, trim, transcribe, and share lessons or demos to build a custom library of recorded educational content. After they’ve recorded a lesson or demo, they can add screenshots and resources to make the content even more engaging. They can even draw or write on the recorded educational content using a touchscreen or stylus to illustrate key concepts. Students can create their own recorded reports to share ideas and learnings, or access lessons easily on Google Drive – at school or from home. To get the Screencast app, educators must update their Chrome OS operating system to M103.
New equipment
Manufactures are increasingly using post-consumer recycled plastics in the construction of their products and other recyclable materials in their packaging. Manufactures such as Dell, are committed to a circular design process. This aims to eliminate the concept of waste, so resources continually circulate within the economy.
Remanufactured equipment
This is not to be confused with refurbished equipment. Circular Computing are the world’s only BS 8887 accredited company. Circular Computing remanufacture enterprise-grade, leading brand Laptops to give them a new lease of life at a fraction of the cost of buying new.
Not only does this avoid the considerable footprint of new computers but we plant 5 trees for every laptop which not only helps to compensate for legacy emissions but helps to reforest areas and communities that desperately need it.
Repurpose equipment
Of course, the best way of reducing your environmental impact is to not through things away! However, we all know that releases of Windows and MacOS are dependent on the specification of the hardware. This means that at some point, it becomes impossible to upgrade the Operating System.
So rather than disposing of the equipment, we can repurpose it. This means using the product in a different way. One option is to convert your old PC or Laptop into a Chrome device using ChromeOS Flex. The small footprint of ChromeOS Flex means that even the oldest of devices gains a new lease of life.
And did you know that you can access Office 365 from a Chrome device.