Energy Star

Posted by Renee Castillo

Wasted energy is a topic I am very familiar with but conserving energy is one I am not as informed about. Over the past few weeks I have noticed my everyday tasks that are victims of phantom energy and I had never even thought about or paid attention to. I have a bad habit of leaving my computer on overnight, falling asleep with the TV on, leaving lights on in an empty room and less obvious habits such as not unplugging the coffee maker, cell phone charger and other such items.
I thought it would be a good idea to check out Energy Star’s website and see if there was any energy saving techniques I could pick up. I browsed the products page and clicked on battery charges. I learned that energy efficient battery charges are able to save 1 billion kilowatt hours of energy per year, which amounts to more than $100 million, each year, in America alone. The energy efficient battery chargers also prevent more than 1 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions, which is the equivalent of emissions produced from 150,000 cars. Americans have approximately 230 million products at their disposal that use battery charging systems and 11% of the national electric bill is from those systems. It is surprising how much energy is wasted from such a tiny unit and when we have a simple solution available to us. I guess the main reason is that we are uneducated about our everyday wasteful habits. I recommend you check out Energy Star’s website: http://www.energystar.gov/ and learn how you can save money and energy. It is difficult to be completely committed to energy conservation but if everyone makes small efforts towards reducing their own waste, it will add up to a big savings.

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