You would think that turning an appliance off would mean that, you know, it was actually off, i.e. not using any electricity. You would, alas, be wrong, as Eve Fox points out in the helpful new Green Your Kitchen series featured on her blog, Garden of Eating:

It seems that just turning an appliance “off” is not enough to prevent it from silently sucking electricity from your sockets 24 hours a day.

This wasted energy is also known as “standby power” and it’s the result of manufacturers being either too cheap or too stupid (maybe both…) to design their electronics so that they will not use any power when turned “off.”

If the term “vampire energy” isn’t scary enough for you, consider this; according to the Department of Energy, vampire energy usage “accounts for 5-8% of a single family home’s total electricity use each year.”  As Eve notes, “That is the rough equivalent of one month’s energy bill!” and adds that “this unintentionally wasted energy sends more than 97 billion pounds of carbon dioxide (1% of the world’s carbon emissions) into the atmosphere”"

Lucky for us, Eve’s put together a simple 3-step program to drive a stake through the heart of your household’s energy vampires”well, 4 steps if you count the last one, which entails patting yourself on the back for sparing your pocketbook and the planet in one fell swoop!

Find out how you can slay your energy vampires here.