Methodist Youth Assembly Goes Generous : Switch off and unplug appliances and chargers

Switch off and unplug appliances and chargers

Unplug

Make sure lights and other electrical equipment in rooms you’re not using are turned off (not just left on standby) and only leave your chargers plugged in and switched on when you’re actually charging your device. At all other times make sure the socket is switched off and, ideally, your charger is unplugged. Easy!

Did you know that 95% of the energy used by the UK’s mobile phone chargers is wasted energy? Only 5% is actually used to charge phones, the rest is used when the charger is plugged into the wall but not switched off at the socket.

That’s over 50,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions that could be avoided if we all just unplugged our chargers after use. Amazingly, this is the equivalent of almost 500 football pitches’ worth of forest every year. Incredible!

And that goes for all appliances! Leaving televisions, DVDs and computers on standby, rather than switching them off, emits four million tonnes of CO2 and wastes £740m a year. The average household could save £37 in electricity bills each year by turning appliances off and not leaving them charging unnecessarily.

And, for those of you already onto this one, how about looking into solar-powered chargers?