Unplug Your Chargers

It may not seem like much, but the energy drain from all those little chargers -- for your cell phone, your iPod and all the other digitalia in your life – can add up. In fact, by some estimates, if 10 percent of the world's cell phone users unplugged their chargers when not in use, it'd save enough energy to power 60,000 European homes for a year.

Thing is, those innocuous little boxes, those power cord tumors, are dumb as … well … bricks. And because of that, they have no idea if they should be sucking juice out of the wall or not. So when you pull your iPod from its dock and head to the gym, the charger keeps on pulling down power. All day long.

Even when they are plugged into a device and doing their job, wall chargers aren't models of efficiency. Stick your hand on one when it's working, and you'll see: they can get nice and toasty to the touch. In fact, 95% of the energy consumed by a charger when it's plugged into a phone – in other words, when it's actually WORKING – is wasted energy!

When you unplug your phone, or your iPod, or your digital camera, or whatever, the power bricks typically drop into a "stand by" mode, drawing only about one watt or so. But think about that for a second: If an average American household has two cell phones, an iPod and a digital camera, all those power bricks sipping wattage in standby mode begin to add up.

Let's just look at cell phones, of which there are an estimated 190 million in the United States. A quick back of the envelope calculation says that the combined stand-by usage of all those cell phone chargers, each drawing a measly watt, could add up to 190 megawatts per day. That's enough to power approximately 100,000 homes.

Add in all the other devices that rely on rechargeable batteries, all those disconnected bricks still stuck in the walls of the world, and you might end up burning through enough power each day to run a small city. Ouch.