EcoITS

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What is ECOITS ?
Well, it's NOT a line of handbags (that's Ecoist)... ECOITS **//is//** our term for a principle centered approach to including Ecological Concerns in the creation and maintenance of Information Technology Services (ITS). There are areas of ECOITS focus for the GREENING of IT Services:
 * Battery Rejuvenation and Recycling
 * Replacing aging equipment with appropriate Refurbished or Recycled equipment
 * Replacing aging equipment with extremely Energy Efficient new equipment

Though it isn't about EcoITS, there are MANY 3 wheeled, highly energy efficient vehicles being marketed in Florida, South Carolina, and other Gulf Coast states. Check out: http://wsfamily.wikispaces.com/3wheel

ECOITS Battery Rejuvenation
Batteries are the most commonly disposed part of electronic devices today. Toward the end of their useful life, many rechargeable batteries will suddenly lose their ability to hold a charge and are prematurely discarded. Often this comes with batteries that are left in chargers all the time. 24x7 charging is NOT good for rechargeable batteries, neither is fast or rapid charging unless the batteries and charger are designed for rapid charging as this can heat up the batteries significantly and reduce their life. So what do you do with those $10 sets of 4 AA batteries that are suddenly not charging? That is other than send them to County battery disposal bins or the recycling bins in many area stores -- that's what you were going to do with them, right? Or perhaps you were going to bring them to the ECO table on the first Sunday of the month to insure they were recycled or disposed of properly!

Well, as long as these rechargeable batteries are physically intact, that is not leaking fluid and with no flakes or crusty salts on the outside and they still have a readable manufacturer label, we may be able to rejuvenate them! As announced in the March 2010 C3HUU Newsletter our ITS Group is collecting still intact, but otherwise stubbornly un-chargeable batteries in the "ECOITS Battery Rejuvenation Bin" at the monthly ECO collection table. See the ECO page for the next collection date, as of this writing it is scheduled on 7March2010 in the C3HUU Community Building.

Smart Battery Chargers
We have located a very reasonably priced Tenergy T6278 Universal Charger (~$20) to accommodate C and D size batteries along with the LaCrosse BC-700 charger we already have that accepts AA and AAA size cells. All of these batteries must have labels defining them as nickel metal hydride (NiMH) or nickel cadmium (NiCd or NiCad). We are mulling over some kind of exchange program, contact us to pursue ideas of how to setup and operate an exchange of rejuvenated rechargeable batteries. At this time, we are looking into handling 9V rechargeable NiMH or NiCd batteries as well. Contact us if you have 9V rechargeable batteries and we'll investigate rejuvenating that type of cell.

OK, enough of batteries and chargers, by now you get the point -- take your lifeless AAA, AA, C, D size rechargeable battery to our "ECOITS Battery Rejuvenation" bin and as often as not we will be able to restore that battery to useful life for another few years. More details on Smart Battery Chargers may be found at this link.

Choosing Rechargeable Batteries
As noted in the References section below, there are many sources for NiMH and NiCd batteries today. here is a short table that may help you decide on which type of battery to get for certain uses. This is a summary of information from varous sites in the References:

1 LSD = Low Self Discharge
 * ~ Application ||~ Preferable Battery Type ||~ Alternate Battery Type ||~ Comments ||
 * Low power flashlights || Rechargeable Alkaline || Alkaline || For many low power with up to 7 LEDs or less than 7W bulbs rechargeable Alkaline batteries work well. ||
 * High power flashlights || Alkaline || LSD 1 NiMH || Many high power flashlights, especially those using halogen bulbs, need the higher current and power capacities of the Alkaline battery. Many will work well with LSD NiMH which retain enough energy to make their use worth considering. ||
 * Digital Cameras || NiMH || LSD 1 NiMH || Almost every camera within the past two years accomodates either NiMH or Alkalines (if they don't use special purpose Lithium Ion) batteries. The non-LSD version may be preferable where the cameras are used often, as non-LSD NiMH are available in higher capacities. ||
 * Smoke & CO Detectors || Alkaline || non-recharcheable Lithium || Rechargeable Alkalines may be acceptable in this use, not NiMH or NiCd as their shorter retention periods and lower voltages are rarely acceptable for these devices. ||
 * Toys || LSD 1 NiMH || Rechargeable Alkaline || In some toys, any rechargeable battery is a significant portion of the cost of the toy. But using rechargeable batteries means the batteries will likely outlast the toy for reuse again! ||
 * Remote Controls || LSD 1 NiMH || Rechargeable Alkaline || Most remote controls that take 1 or 2 batteries work well with NiMH, some do require the higher voltage of Rechargeable Alkaline batteries. ||

Some of the most reliable available low self discharge, so called "LSD" batteries, are Target and Radio Shack with the RayOVac Hybrid and Sanyo Eneloop brands of LSD rechargeable batteries. For the few applications where an LSD battery cannot substitute for an alkaline

The GREENING of IT Services
What is the first ECOITS principle when acquiring equipment ? Well, of course it is to Reuse, as noted above, and offer up our older equipment for Reuse. Next up in overall ECOITS rating: acquire the most energy efficient replacement equipment available. Many think that in the world of IT equipment when you go to replace equipment that you have to spend a lot of money for new, energy efficient, green gear. Not true! Here is a partial list of our energy efficient changes, made with no increase ITS budgets. All told the changes below saved at least 8.9kWhr/day just counting the direct energy savings!
 * Reuse of IT equipment, saving equipment from the landfill, also a more efficient use of resources than recycling the components:
 * refurbished personal computers that are less than 2 years old when we got them. Each generation also draws less power than their predecessor, or has a better management of power and goes into standby mode more readily.
 * refurbished network equipment, also less than 2 years old when acquired
 * Energy efficient, ** GREEN **, IT gear:
 * The Network Attached Storage (NAS) device kept the wiring closet very toasty even in the dead of winter, soaking up 250W constantly. When a second disk drive in the NAS went bad, it was time to replace this energy hog with a factory reconditioned QNAP NAS device that uses less than 1/15 the power (15w) and can go into standby when not used. The new twin 500GB drives used in the [|QNAP TS-209 Turbo] NAS are "green" Western Digital hard disks that are designed to be more efficient and standup to more on/off cycles going into and back out of low energy standby mode. This replacement saves over 5.6kWHr/day.
 * The Netgear 24 port Gigabit network switch was a new item, replacing a 12 port Linksys 100Mb/s switch. We weren't able to get detailed measurements on the old Linksys 100Mb/s switch before retiring it to the Habitat ReStore, product data sheets state the older switch just about 15% more energy for fewer network devices attached. Estimated savings: 0.54kWhr/day
 * When we moved from Earthlink DSL to AT&T DSL in 2008, we were able to move from a very hot DSL modem (drew 0.8A AC, about 80W all the time, nice little toaster!) to a refurbished router that also included a WiFi link (draws under 0.2A AC, about 15W), saving about 1.56kWhr/day
 * Turning off, or put in standby, the IT equipment left on, but unused:
 * staff found that Logos isn't required all the time, and the Logos files are on Andrea's Finance PC, so when Logos isn't needed, the PC is now turned off. Logos wouldn't "wake up" the PC so putting it in Standby didn't help. Saves 50W for over 16 hours most days, for about 0.9KWhr/day.
 * the old Panasonic FAX machine didn't have a good "Standby" mode, it was really running 24x7, and drawing about 40W. The new FAX machine is a Canon multi-function copier/printer/fax machine (MFC), and automatically goes into standby if unused for a few minutes. When in standby the Canon MFC draws under 5W! Savings of about 0.84KWhr/day

So what else is C3HUU doing to promote ECOITS principles? We will be updating this web page periodically and posting related information from other like minded groups across our congregation. A summary of ECOITS and the battery recycling and rejuvenating program was put forth in the following article submitted to the March 2010 C3HUU Newsletter:

© [|Copyleft] Mark R Smith, C3HUU, 2010 [] ECOITS@c3huu.org

C3HUU ECO Links

 * Return to main ECOITS page (this page)>
 * Smart Battery Chargers
 * C3HUU ECOITS Newsletter article from March 2010
 * Return to main ECO page