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Michael & Nick’s Top Ten Things To Turn Off and Unplug


To officially opt in to Earth Hour, all you have to do is turn off your lights. Easy enough, but what about the other 364 days and 23 hours of the year? As important as it is to show your support for Earth Hour, there’s more you can do to save the world. Here’s a list of 10 household items that all environmental stewards should keep an eye on:
10) Your Television
The last thing you want is to negate the valiant effort you made to turn off the lights by watching your television at full brightness. When you’re not watching the tele, make sure to turn off the power. Most new TVs do a pretty good job of conserving power when they’re off, and only use a negligible amount when they’re plugged in to save your settings. You might want to scan your basement for any “instant-on” televisions though. Their ability to turn on in an instant really means that they’re sucking almost as much power when they’re off as when they’re on.
9) Your Computer Set-up
Computers are notoriously left on and forgotten about. They’re energy suckers! Shut them down every night for the environment (and you will be rewarded with an extended computer life span) and ensure that you’re power saver settings are environmentally friendly.
8) Your Toaster Oven
Here’s a myth buster for you: toasters, blenders, panini makers, and other appliances do not use energy when they’re plugged in unless they have some sort of digital display (if they keep track of time, for example). It only takes a second to unplug your unusables, but you might as well leave them be if they’re energy friendly.
7) Your Lights and Lamps
6) Your Space Heater
Depending on where you are, giving up heat is the ultimate sacrifice. Get out your winter jackets and blankets and unplug any heaters you have around the house.

5) Your Vibrating Bed
Are you going to bed before 9:30? If not, you’re not going to be using it anyway, why not set it and forget it, until bedtime that is.

4) Your Stereo System
If you’re an audiophile, then this is a tough one to do. Make sure that you’ve got your iPod fully charged for the hour, so that you don’t loose tunage during the outage. Or, if you have records laying around the house, you could always make you’re own record player.

3) Your Train Set
With the TV, and the Stereo and the computer unplugged, unplugging the train set will be a sad moment. What would you do? I guess it’s time to pull out some books.

2) Your Cellphone Charger
Cellphone chargers are nasty energy culprits. They use almost as much energy when they’re sitting idle on your counter as when they’re pumping your phone full of juice. With a little foresight, you may not even give this a second though. But if you’re charging your phone, pull it from the wall, and hope you don’t drop below 10% battery.

1) Your Basement Clock
It’s probably plugged in the corner of the deepest darkest recesses of your house. It might not just be in the basement, other places include the garage, or a storage room, or the laundry room.
Don’t worry about the Electric Fence… it’s solar
We’re unplugging the website for Earth Hour. Join us in turning off your top ten electricity bugs on Saturday from 8:30 pm to 9:30 pm.

 

As the social media and community coordinator at UsedEverywhere.com, Michael is the voice you hear when you phone our 1-800 number and the text you read skim three days a week on our blog. Keep up with his antics on Twitter @MrConkin.

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