Why? Having our gadgets and appliances always on standby or charging, sucks electricity out of the system.

STAGGERING FACT

In the UK alone, households waste £227m a year by leaving their appliances in standby mode. Now let’s extrapolate that around the globe. Now lets multiply that by what it really means. EMISSIONS. Exactly.

Really?

Yes. Appliances still use up to 90% of their power in standby mode. Cost aside, that’s precious energy being drawn from the grid that just needn’t be. And that equals the dreaded word: Emissions.
The top electricity vampires operating stealthily right under our unsuspecting noses are:
> TVs, stereos and speakers - most of us never switch these off completely
> Games consoles -especially bad as they use almost the same power as when playing.
> Desktops, laptops and phones - often on charge much longer than they need to be.
> Printers and scanners - most of us have these on all the time, er…not sure why.
> Alexa and similar - constantly talking to the cloud even when we’re not.

Ok got it. So how do I take action?

Breaking the standby habit takes a bit of getting used to so let’s set ourselves up for success. Get a power-strip for each cluster point so you can turn things off with one flick of the switch. Put set-top boxes, modems, clocks etc that need to stay on, on a separate plug.

The easy, every day:

Charge your phone 2 hours before you sleep and then unplug it completely (vs overnight)
Charge laptops only when you need to - don’t have them plugged in all the time you work
Go on a vampire hunt with a quick switch-off runaround before bed-time!

But will it cost me more money?

So get this. Energy vampires waste around 8% of the total electricity we use at home. That’s almost a month’s electricity bill! (ish). Yes, we save.

We used to leave…

…our phones and laptops charging all night when they actually take a couple of hours. That’s our new mission. Powering down to power up the planet. Rah

“Alexa, please switch off everything at the socket before we go to bed. That includes you.”