A Practical Guide to Green Computing for Manufacturers, Businesses, and Individuals

Abstract—Concerns related to the environmental harm
caused by the production, use, and testing of hardware as well as
software, are widespread throughout the world. Additionally,
there is a problem that the associated subtasks use more power
than they ought to. Into this direction, there is a constant drive
towards Green Computing since many businesses and
organizations are extremely concerned about their carbon
footprint and its associated environmental negative effects. The
latter is a novel idea that has gained a lot of attention recently
and is promoted as a fresh approach towards making computing
more environmentally friendly by reducing the impact of
computers on the environment. Given that manufacturers,
businesses, and individuals have the opportunity to use
technology to help the environment through programs and
systems aimed at reducing power consumption and saving
energy, a practical guide to Green Computing is proposed in this
manuscript. This guide offers an overview of Green Computing, a
description of its development, as well as a list of its services,
depicting the obstacles to its goal. A list of related Green
Computing efforts aimed at both large enterprises and individual
users, is presented, whereas specific manufacturers and large
businesses already performing Green Computing actions are
discussed. The aim of this research is to give up-to-date practical
guidelines towards a greener and more sustainable environment
with reduced carbon emissions that are caused by energy-hungry
computing actions and environmentally unaware decisions.