Heh, but do you realise how many mobiles I have ;)

about the same as it took you to type your message? :p

I agree, you are so lazy dctanner

try the standby buster device, from energy-centre.co.uk. Allows you to remotely switch off sockets, so you don't have to grovel behind the tv or pc or whatever. Genius.

Haha, admittedly, i think that, but then the guilt kicks in. You realise that actually it is sooo easy. It is very lazy dctanner, shameful ;P

Googling reveals this...

http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/sustainable/charger/

As far as I'm concerned though any saving is a good saving!

Thank you AlunR. I, as well, have done a bit of Google-searching, but have not found anything definitive. The most authoritative piece I read is specific to Nokia chargers (http://www.cellular-news.com/story/23664.php)

Still no word on iPhones charging through mini-usb via computer, but yes, I appreciate that small steps are valuable.

Thanks for the reply.

I recently purchased some energy monitors to measure and hopefully reduce the energy consumption in the home and businesses.

The Owl and the Efergy are the two units I chose.

I really like the Owl for the following reasons,

Nicely made
Made in UK
Good display

However, it doesn’t record the energy consumption. This is a pity as this feature makes the Efergy a winner, despite it being of inferior quality and make in China. With the record of energy consumption, one can look back and see if ones efforts have paid off.

This feature in the Owl would make it the clear winner.

I hate myself for giving this answer but your phone charger draws next to no power when it is plugged in and not in use!

I've just plugged 3 phone chargers into the same extension lead running through my power meter and there was no increase in wattage. This means they were pulling less than a third of a watt each. So if you left them on all day it would be less than 8watt/hours or less than 3 kwh a year.

I'm not sure what 3kwh's of electricity adds to your annual carbon footprint but I'm guessing about the same as driving 3 miles, so each time you leave your phone charger plugged-in force yourself to walk to the shops rather than driving, it'll make a much bigger difference.

Short answer, not a lot. I did a test -- see half-way down here:
http://www.smartplanet.com/news/tech/10001014/hands-on-the-eco-minded-nokia-3110-evolve.htm

I had anticipated that it was not much. There's a good deal of speculation, and not much science in many claims.

Thank you to SharpSharp and smartplanet for sharing their results.

One easy way to find out if your phone charger is drawing energy plugged or unplugged is feel it. If heat is being generated, energy is being used.

As phone chargers use a coil to scale the volts down from 250v to your phones voltage, there is potential for heat to be produced there. However depending on your chargers circuitry, unless the circuit is complete there will be no energy flow and therefore no energy used.