Introducing the ecobutton™

Did you know - wasted energy from just 1 PC can cost around £50 or more a year!

There are some 10m office PCs in Britain and 1.8m are regularly left on overnight or all weekend, according to a recent study. This means that around 1.5 billion kWh of energy is wasted by computers and monitors being left on – that’s approximately £115million wasted in the UK every year! Convert this into carbon and we waste around 7,000,000 tonnes of carbon because of computers and monitors (that’s 10% of the UK climate change levy target)!

How does it work?

The ecobutton™ is an illuminating USB device that acts as a reminder and a prompt for the user to press the ecobutton™ whenever the computer is left idle. There are lots of opportunities for use (coffee break, meetings, lunch, phone call, going home).

When activated, it engages the computer into energy saving ‘eco-mode’. Both the computer and monitor are set to operate in the most efficient, lowest power mode available. This draws the same nominal power as when the computer is actually turned off! When you need to use the computer again, simply press any key to instantly return to where you left off!

The savings

On a typical office PC, engaging ‘ecomode’ for 3 hours a day could save around £50 in electricity per year. If the PC is left on overnight the saving could be £100 or more - or the equivalent of 600kgs of CO2. Based on this, the ecobutton™ pays for itself in less than 4 months - and then keeps on paying money to your bottom line every day it is used!

Make a difference

The ecobutton™ proactively encourages eco awareness - and that every small click adds up to make a BIG difference. This is emphasised by the provision of an on-screen meter that shows exactly what has been saved (in both power cost and carbon footprint). It is also possible to co-brand the ecobutton™ and to even incorporate on-screen sponsoring or advertising with optional web-linking facility to promote your brand.

The ecobutton™ is RoHS compliant and manufactured from recycled plastic. It is a retrofit device so that it will work on any PC currently running Windows 2000, XP and Vista 32 bit, with a Mac version currently in the pipeline.