The screensavers on your office PCs are playing havoc with your business’s profits. It is a myth that such software saves power when the computers are not in use, meaning money is being burned when the machines are left on for extended periods.

Computers and monitors account for half the electricity wasted in an office every day.

According to government figures, if all your PCs were turned off overnight and at weekends, they would save £63 a year each. So, for a business with 100 computers, that’s an annual saving of £6,300.

Add this amount to the savings you’ll make by following other simple ‘green’ rules and you could end up many thousands better off. NetRegs, the environmental agency (http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/netregs/), claims that small and medium businesses (SMEs) can save around £1,000 per employee per year through basic energy efficiency.

That will help recover some of the £1bn that the government-backed Carbon Trust (http://www.thecarbontrust.co.uk) suggests is wasted annually by growing businesses. That wastage, says the organisation, accounts for a tonne of carbon dioxide emissions and 30% of the total energy used by SMEs.

Rather than looking around for cheaper deals on electricity and gas, as SMEs are prone to do, experts recommend that you consider a variety of energy-saving measures that can be taken by everyone and cost little or no time or money. For instance, simply by turning down the office thermostat by a single degree, your firm could save around 10% of its energy. A new boiler could be up to 40% more efficient, and regular maintenance of your heating system will help, too – especially if it is well insulated.

Encourage members of staff to turn off all lights and electrical equipment at night and over weekends. Many offices have fluorescent lights, but it is a myth that they use less energy if they are left switched on. They use a lot more energy in their few seconds of start-up than they do in the equivalent time of running. But after being left on for 15 minutes, a fluorescent light will have used 500 times the energy it uses in coming on.

By better positioning employees’ workstations, you can make more and better use of natural light and less use of electrical light. When it’s warm in the summer, open windows instead of turning on the air conditioning. If it’s too warm in the winter, turn down the heating, don’t open the windows and allow heated air to escape. Don’t heat areas that aren’t in constant use (such as corridors and store rooms), and make sure radiators aren’t blocked by furniture.

Some employees might not turn off their computers because they forget or find it a nuisance to have to boot up every morning. To solve this problem, you can buy Nightwatchman software that will shut down PCs at a set time and restart them in the morning before their users arrive for work.

Devices such as photocopiers, scanners and printers spend a lot of time idling, and even the ‘energy efficient’ ones are burning cash when not in use – so turn them off! This will also help them last longer. If you want to avoid the time-wasting process of booting up, use inexpensive on-off timers in their power sockets to turn them on before the office opens for business.