UK households waste £134 million a year by leaving gadgets plugged despite the device being fully charged, according to a study by EON.
Nine out of ten people keep gadgets on permanent charge, despite the potential damage to the battery life, the environmental impact and the possibility of saving on average £60 a year on their energy bill.
One in ten admitted that they were simply too lazy to unplug the gadgets despite the benefits, with people aged 18 and 24 four times more likely to leave them plugged in than those aged 55 or older. It also seems that no demographic is exempt, with one in five children leaving toys on charge.
“It’s crucial that we keep an eye on how much money and energy we’re wasting keeping them charging when we don’t need to,” commented EON’s Emma Thompson. “When you plug in a charger, think about how long it needs to reach full charge, rather than just leaving it on overnight.”
“Generally mobile phones only take two hours to charge but most people leave them plugged in overnight. By unplugging your gadgets once they’re charged, you’ll be helping to reduce your energy bills,” she added.
The problem is likely to grow as the market for gadgets grows, with increased sales of electronics resulting in warnings that the UK may miss emissions targets by 2020. In November it was revealed that almost half of people in the UK are smartphone owners, with demand for power likely to increase as more are sold over the Christmas period.
The energy wasted by idle electronics is not confined to the home as 80 percent of the UK’s desktop computers have no power management solution, which could save £25 in electricity on every PC each year. It was estimated that the cost of businesses leaving electrical equipment on standby during one Christmas period was £110m.
However these potential savings are not enough to convince businesses of the worth of power management as they fear that it could disrupt their IT operations. This has meant employees are taking the lead, with most of them turning off their computers because they are concerned about costs and the environment, not because of company policy.
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134 million pounds divided by 62 million people equals roughly £2.16 per person per year or a measly 3p per day!
Some headline grabbing that tries to sound big but the thing does not add up. A transformer or charger draws only the current required by the secondary load i.e. the battery. When the battery is full the current drops to nearly zero.
Why then does a plugged in charger cost money on a full battery?
I think it is time some one looked at the physics behind this claim and also what the industry is going to do with all this off peak generation capacity if we switch everything off at night?
Nick the greek, you obviously dont understand simple electronics, a lot of the energy is lost in heat. a typical lap top charger will run at 300ma when charging, 200ma when the battery is fully charged and will still use 100ma with no load at all - i.e. not plugged into the lap top. likewise with a old style phone charger (new ones are better.. I know saving 200ma isnt much, but thats 1 amp every 5 hour - or in money terms (based on elec at 15p per Kwh)£56 a year... and thats just for 1 lap top.
I guess the £60 per household a year also means that there's ~30 people in the average UK household.
So make smarter chargers, for f-sake. Lazy cheap gits.
So, if the charger is putting out heat, then the room heating required will be less to reach the same temperature in the room. In effect, there's nothing wasted during the winter months. It's only wasted heat during the summer months. I wish these journalists would see sense and put everything into the equation.
£56 to leave a laptop plugged in? You must be joking; got rid of my faulty lappie a year ago and have noticed no discernible difference in my bill. Load of old crock if u ask me.
You spend thousands investing in a website only to perpetuate a ridiculous argument. If you do not get your editorial right you'll lose sponsors/advertisers.
I've also put a space in before my name to assist you!
1. @Graeme - I suspect they spent tens of thousands on the web site - which only magnifies the ridicule
2. @Graeme - try an underscore rather than a space
3. Assuming a population of 60,000,000 and 2 people per household this means that if the figure of £134,000,000 is correct then it's actually about £4.50 per household per year - a little over 1p per day. Hardly the stuff of headlines. However if Andrew Timms is correct (and at least he has worked through his figures then the cost is nearer £56 per year per household which makes the total waste £1,680,000,000 for the nation. Someone is out by a factor fo 10 whih does not make good reporting
Why not simply take the battery out and connect the device directly through the mains adaptor.
This will stop it charging, which is what all the fuss seems to be about, leave the device usable and save all that money.
This kind of green hysteria relies on the fact that most people don't know how much power typical devices take, and therefore will believe anything they're told.
ALL laptops regulate the battery charge, and in most cases the standby consumption of the charger is considerably less than that of one energy efficient bulb.
All desktop computer operating systems since Windows 95 have had powersave modes. Again, utter nonsense.
If there is an area of power wastage it's in businesses where staff leave computers on overnight, usually against the instructions of the IT department.
Running a car for about a second uses the energy a charger does in a day.. Maybe there's a more pressing concern here
Having just passed by the local football ground this afternoon, I just wondered if the multiple arrays of floodlighting might be considered rather more wasteful of energy, than leaving mobile phone chargers plugged in continuously? IF Global Warming was an issue, we could save an awful lot of power by just playing football in daylight.
Are phone chargers, really, such an issue?
Don't people know that recharging a battery before it is discharged shortens its length?
Well the answer is use a solar pannel for charging the batteries there are plenty of them around exactly for this purpose even running a desktop, That would solve this argument
Yes blame us for plugging in things with plugs on.
How about we pass a law that the electronics industry manufacture chargers that have feedback from the product; when the product is charged, they switch themselves to very low power consumption until the product reports the battery is low. I am sure that this could be achieved for no extra cost once incorportated in to all charging microchips.