Living in a tiny apartment with my boyfriend is, to many of my friends’ surprise, a completely wonderful living situation for both of us. We live so comfortably together that we rarely argue about chores, bills or annoying habits. However, there’s one way in which we’re slightly different, which leads to a bit of frustration on my part. Every once in a while, when he leaves for work, I’ll notice… he grabbed his phone, but left the charger… plugged into the wall. This, in case you don’t already know, is one of the main wastes of energy, causing unnecessary electricity to constantly run through whatever device is plugged in, for no reason. In simple terms, this phenomenon is called “phantom” or “vampire” power.
According o the U.S. Department of Energy, 75 percent of the electricity used for household electronics is actually used while devices are turned off. Think of all of the devices in your home that constantly suck energy from the outlet: clocks, cable boxes, stereos, iPod and phone chargers, microwaves, etc…
So, what’s a person to do? Unplug his clock every night, and reset it every morning? Not necessarily. Instead, be aware of what you use and what you don’t. Follow the list below to reduce your carbon footprint and your electricity bill.
1.First, listen. If you plug in your cell phone charger, chances are if you listen carefully you’ll literally hear the power surging through it, regardless of whether or not it’s powering up your phone. This demonstrates the point: electricity is being used even without powering any device at all. So unplug your chargers when they are not in use. When the battery is full, do not, I repeat, do not leave them resting in the outlet.
2. Unplug any appliance that you do not need running 100 percent of the time: DVD player, TV, computer, coffee maker, toaster, radio, etc. (Feel free to add to this list in the comments section below!)
3. Another good rule of thumb is to unplug anything with LED lights — rest assured, they are sucking up unnecessary electricity.
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I unplug electronic devices that I am not using from the surge protector and turn the surge protector off when I’m not using my computer or watching television in my room. I don’t leave my cell phone charger plugged into the wall all the time and I unplug it as soon as the full charge alarm goes off. I try to turn the lights off when I leave the room even if it is for a couple of minutes. Doing this saved my parents roughly twenty bucks a month on their electric bill and I’m one of three living in our home.
My dad leaves his cell phone charger plugged into the wall because it is “too inconvenient” for him to have to plug it back in when he needs it. He won’t let us turn off the surge protector in the living room because we have cable and if you cut the power to the cable box the guide doesn’t show up right away when you turn it back on(It takes about five minutes to come back on if you keep it powered yet still turned off and ten to fifteen minutes if you have it powered and turned on) and it is “too inconvenient” to have to wait until it shows up. And he doesn’t believe that unplugging or turning off things will save any substantial amount of money or have any positive effect on reducing our carbon footprint.