Who in your family wastes the most energy? When you sit down to think about it, is it the adults or the children? In a survey conducted by uSwitch.com [1], over a quarter of respondents said that children were not good at saving energy. Although adults may use the most energy in the home through cooking, cleaning and washing, it is children who are more likely to waste energy [2].
Why is this?
This is generally through leaving on unnecessary lights, leaving computers and TVs on when they are not in use and leaving many consumer electrics on standby. Children often have a variety of electronic gaming appliances and are most likely to have multiple appliances on at the same time. Surprisingly, around 63% of people who were surveyed by uSwitch.com said that everyone in their household was aware that they are wasting energy, yet don’t do anything about it. Ann Robinson, the director of consumer policy at uSwitch.com thinks that “in the face of rising energy bills and our ever-growing love affair with electronic gadgets within the home, consumers can no longer afford to waste energy”, if this is true then the problem is only set to increase, with more and more electronic gadgets becoming available.
What can be done?
The survey also found that 60% of households do not have energy efficiency devices and just 14% use standby savers. With around 37% of consumers admitting to leaving their TV on standby most or all of the time, this is an easy way to waste energy regularly and make your energy bills more expensive. Standby savers are simple to fit and use, it’s just a case of remembering to use them. Try and encourage your children to switch the TV off using the remote rather than the on the appliance so the standby saver kicks in and switches everything off. If anything, standby savers actually save you time, and not to mention money! Standby savers such as the Lime Energy Saving Plug can save you up to £20 a year and you can often receive them for free from many energy providers [3].
Energy saving can be fun!
If you want to help your children learn how to be more energy efficient around the home, there are several websites designed with fun games to help teach them. Energyhog.com [4] uses fun games such as Fridge Frenzy, Bulb Hunter and Whack a Hog to teach children how to save energy around the home by methods such loft insulation (knock the energy hogs down using insulation rolls), caulking your windows (seal the windows before the energy hogs get in) and CFLs (change all the bulbs in the maze).
More importantly, if you want to make your children more energy conscious, make sure you lead by example!
[1] www.uSwitch.com
[3] http://www.nef.org.uk/actonCO2/free-standby-saver-plug.asp
