Turn your living room lights off. Are lots of twinkling standby lights still on? Appliances on standby can use up to 85 per cent of the energy they use when fully on. Turn your appliances right off when they are not in use you'll save energy and money. Standby is for fighter pilots.
im with jeffluff, below... i have always switched things off by the sockets... but got it from my parents, same as closing all doors before going to bed! god knows what would happen... :-)
I always make sure all the plug sockets in the house are switched off before I go out. I'd like to say it's entirely for environmental reasons, but it's mostly because my dad convinced me that something bad would happen if I didn't!
Bought Bye Bye Standby, which means I haven't got to crawl around the floor every evening (if I don't want to), and makes the whole thing jolly easy.
Yep, always turn everything off. The only annoying one now is my modem.
Twice already I have turned it off and for some obscure reason it has disconfigured by itself, leaving me with no web access. The folks at my ISP tell me it is bizarre and they don't know what may cause it...
Anyway, all the rest is off, no stand-by.
I always plug out the TV and everything, but my flatmates don't think that's necessary. So we had lots of disagreements recently. I think that's sad. Why don't they care about the environment?
I try to do this & keep plugging stuff out... lol
But other family members keep it plugged in, ugh..
At least it's better than everyone leaving it plugged in... :)
Fighter Pilots??......COOL!
85 per cent? ..... NOT COOL.
tenorune is spot on when it come to extension power strips.
Rather than "daisy-chaining" extensions, I plug each extension directly into a wall socket and then group the devices that are used together on the same extension. If I want to watch TV I flick the switch on the extension with the TV and VCR on, when I watch a DVD I flick the switch for the DVD and the HiFi extension. This keeps Stand-by running down to a minimum.
I've bought an individually switched 6-way extension for my computer stuff and only switch the power on for a device when it's in use, this prevents all those black power-bricks running warm all the time.
Power strips are your friend. Plug appliances and electronics that use vampire power into power strips so you can easily shut them all off.
It'll save them money.
You can't change other peoples behaviour directly. I always like to remember Gandi's words - 'Be the change you want to see in the world'
Go quietly about your own business and model it for your flatmates without pressuring them.
I nag, cajole, plug things out myself, preach of money-saving... & still sometimes my family will do it, sometimes not.. 'fear of thunderstorms' works best in our family, as our PC & video recorder got fried once.. so PC & TV do get plugged out religiously, at least at the end of the day..
Thanks for your suggestions=)
It's good to know I'm not the only one with that problem;-)
Perhaps time could be spent inventing a remote control that switched off all these little red lights at the push of a button. Grab the soldering iron!
dctanner - one advantage to having fewer power sockets in our house is that most of our appliances are plugged into one or two 4-way bars. It only takes a second to turn off the mains power to all our lounge appliances. It might not be an exciting second, but that's hardly the point is it?
Only boring people are bored I always say. Concious living is being alive!
Busybee, for those who are too lazy/rich/etc. to press a button or pull a plugcheck out http://energy-centre.co.uk/. they have the very remote controlled gadget you mentioned, as well as a host of other clever devices.
