In these environmentally conscious times, the best thing to do with your computer when you are not using it is to turn it off. However, even if you do turn off the computer at the end of the day, there are often patches of time when it is not being fully utilised. Add up that unused computing power across many people’s computers and you have a huge resource of unused computing power.

There is where projects such as the World Community Grid come in. They allow you to download a piece of software that sits in the background and, when you are not using up all your computer’s power for something else, makes use of it to help do large scale number crunching for medical research projects and the like.

These research projects often need huge computing power so by taking part in the World Community Grid you help provide them with the computing power they need, saving them the expense of buying massive extra computers for the project.

The software automatically starts and stops in the background without you having to do anything and, in my experience, works very smoothly and does not slow down my normal computer work.

All in all: a good way of helping a good cause at minimal effort. You can download the software from the World Community Grid’s website. If (when!) you do – which also involves registering on their website - you can join the “Liberal Democrats” team so that the contribution of your computer is added up with colleagues to show collectively what we’re contributing.