Did you know that laptops use loads less energy than desktop PCs? You didn’t? Well then, isn’t it just the perfect excuse to buy the laptop you’ve always wanted. If you need any more persuasion, here are some ideas. If you aren’t endowed with an abundance of space in your home, it takes up much less of the space you do have. You can easily put it away each time you finish with it, and it’s super handy to take away with you on weekends or holidays, to save you having to try and find internet cafes to send that email home (long live wi-fi).

Decision made? Well, all that remains to be done is to find the greenest laptop that you can lay your hands on.

The choices available to UK consumers are not as wide as those available in the US, but there are still a couple of laptops on this side of the Atlantic that are worth their weight in green.

Apple Macbook Air

The Macbook Air is the greenest laptop that Apple has ever produced. It’s not quite the greenest laptop out there (according to Greenpeace the Sony TZ is tops, see below), but it does have the edge on other Mac products and it’s green credentials aren’t bad at all. Here are a few eco-friendly facts about the Macbook Air from Eco-Chick Starre Vartan’s blog post on the subject:

It’s got an aluminum case, which makes it easy to recycle

Mercury- and Arsenic-free display

The circuit boards are PVC (polyvinyl chloride) and BFR (bromine) free

Less packaging waste; packaging was reduced by 56%

It’s as skinny as it looks: 0.76 inches at the thickest part, and just 0.16 inches at the thinnest. It’s so slim Jobs slid it inside one of those manila office envelopes. And not very heavy either, which makes it light on your shoulders when you have to lug it around all day, and also costs less in CO2 emissions to ship to you…

Sony Vaio TZ series

Not quite as thin as the Macbook Air, the Sony Vaio TZ series does outdo the Air in other categories, according to Greenpeace’s Guide to Greener Electronics.

Wired reports that: “Sony’s TZ series of 11.1″ subnotebooks are singled out for praise in Greenpeace’s latest guide to greener electronics, but the company itself was edged out by Samsung, Toshiba and Nokia in the overall runnings. The TZ, newly garbage-free when it comes to pre-installed applications, is also free of another kind of garbage — beryllium — which landed it the top spot in the advocacy group’s roundup of green machines.”