Tameside Council's £30 fine for leaving PCs on : Hippyshopper

Tameside council "is to fine its own departments £30 for every computer left on overnight in a bid to save energy." The council reckons a computer left on all day costs £37 a year to run, £27 more than it would cost if users simply switched if off at nights and at weekends.

When the council left warning stickers on PCs which had been left on overnight in a kind of trial run, the resultant change in behaviour saved £4,000 in one building in three months. Leaving aside the obvious environmental benefits, I'm sure council tax payers will be happy to see that kind of saving.

The council's Labour-run, so naturally the Tory group leader couldn't just praise the initiative, he had to slag it off, claiming that it was "autocratic to treat employees this way".

Just because people are used to leaving an unused computer on all weekend, it doesn't make it an erosion of personal liberty to come up with a way of encouraging them to change their habits. It's not like the employees are being asked to pay the £30 fine out of their own pocket anyway. Councillor John Bell - you are an idiot.

Fines and bath reduction - council level green action [via How to Save the World for Free]

Photo credit: 4 am PC glow taken from slapjack's Flickr photostream under the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs licence.