10 Seconds to Green

"I'm too busy" is not an excuse to destroy the planet. That said, not all of us have time to build greenhouses or clean up other people's messes. Goddess and Guru want to help you do your part, so check back here every few days for ways to go green in fewer (not less, right Justin?!) than 10 seconds.

10 Seconds to Green #1:

u n p l u g

Your charger's in the socket, but your phone's not plugged in...so you're not wasting energy, right? Wrong. Standby power -- also known as vampire power -- is what electronic devices suck up even when they're turned off. It can amount to 10% of household energy consumption. Just to give you a frame of reference, here are some numbers:

Watts are units of power drawn by an appliance at any point in time.

We can convert to units of energy, kilowatt-hours. Say your laptop sits there, turned off, for 8 hours every night.

9 watts / 1000 = .009 kilowatts

.009 kW x 8 hours = .072 kilowatt-hours

.072 kWh x 365 days per year = 26.3 kWh/yr

That's a decent amount of energy -- enough to run your laptop ON 8 hours a day, for 2 and a half months.

Conclusion: UNPLUG. Ten seconds a day can save a ton of energy in the long run. Go one step further by purchasing electronics with low standby power consumption.