£38 Leave appliances on standby
According to the “Habits of a lifetime” survey published by the Energy Savings Trust, 71% of us leave the TV, DVD, Digital Recorder and other appliances on standby. Having the appliance on standby uses electricity even though it is not doing anything.
Most appliances that have standby use at least 3.7Ws on average when not in use - microwaves use 3.7W, TVs use 6W, digital TV boxes use 11W and VCRs use 12W.
The US President in 2001signed a decree that ordered all Government departments to purchase devices that use no more than 1W of electricity when on standby. The US Department of Energy now provides guidance on how to purchase appliances with low standby power.
£32 Use the tumble dryer instead of the line.
£32 per year could be saved if we put our wet washing outside on a line or near a radiator to dry instead of using the tumble dryer.
£14 Wash clothes at 60 degrees
Forty four percent of us are still washing our clothes at 60 degrees. This uses quite a bit more electricity than the 40 degree option which most of our washing machines have. More savings can be realised if you have a machine that has a 30 degree setting.
£13 Leave the heating on while the house is occupied
We estimate that reducing the time our heating is left on by half an hour a day extra during the winter months costs around £13 a year. This reduction can be achieved by turning the heating off when we go out or by reducing the overall time period when the heating is programmed to be on.
£9 Overfilling the kettle
According to our estimates based on work conducted by the Environment Change Institute at Oxford we could save around £9 per year by not overfilling the kettle.
It is hard to imagine that such a simple measure could have such a large impact, but on average each household in Great Britain boils the kettle a staggering1560 times per year. We estimate that every year in the UK we collectively boil nearly 3 Olympic swimming pools of water that we don’t use.
To solve the problem there is an eco kettle that limits the amount of water being boiled to the number of cups that you stipulate, but the simplest way is to just fill up the kettle with a cup rather than placing the kettle under the tap. A pain, we agree, but it will make a big difference.
£4 Leaving lights off in unoccupied rooms.
To cut back on how much we spend on lighting is not just a matter of turning them off when they are not needed, but also looking at whether we need as much lighting as we currently have. Rooms often have central, wall and floor standing lights all turned on at once when combinations of these would be sufficient.
We estimate that for each 100kW bulb that we use for one hour less is worth around £4 per year.
£2 Electrical chargers plugged in
According to the Energy Savings Trust 65% of us leave the charger plugged in instead of removing it from the socket. When they are plugged in they still use electricity even when they are not recharging anything.