Retrevo provides a survival guide to greener living with electronics

For your Earth Day reading enjoyment, the folks at Retrevo (that indispensable source for the product manual you were just sure you'd never need to open again -- you know, the one you tossed two days before you desperately needed page 47) have a nice PDF guide to greening your electronics usage without tearing your hair out.

And if 30 pages is too much greenery for you -- a real possibility according to a recent Retrevo survey -- we talked them out of one tip that everyone should be able to handle.

That recent survey undertaken by Retrevo found that while 75% of consumers claimed energy efficient products are important to them, less than half have actually "bought green" and only 35% would pay extra to do so. There's a lot of skepticism about "greenwashing," too -- 40% of those surveyed suspected that manufacturers and retailers are mostly just throwing the word "green" around.

And if you do nothing else, suggests Retrevo's Andrew Eisner, at least turn off your TV and other gear when you're not using it -- especially those game consoles. Eisner cites a NRDC study that found most game consoles are left powered on when the TV is turned off, and continue to use more than 100 watts while doing nothing at all. (A large plasma television, in comparison, uses about 400 watts.)

Moreover, game consoles use several times as much energy as comparable non-gaming gear -- e.g., Sony PlayStation 3 with built-in Blu-ray player compared to a stand-alone Sony Blu-ray DVD player. And don't feel too smug, Wii fans; your console uses a fraction of the juice the other major players do, but Eisner notes that the company itself has, according to Greenpeace studies, a dismal environmental record.