Power Hungry Lunatics

Frivolous, no... preposterous. In fact we're talking stark raving bonkers here! Can you believe that us nitwit brits waste £5billion each year?  Now, don't get us wrong, we just luuurve spending money. But on holidays, dining out, showing off, you know, on fun stuff.  Not mindless, wasted electricity of all things!

It's safe to say that most of us leave TVs on standby, boil a gazillion times too much water in the kettle, or lazily leave our mobiles on continued charging (oops, guilty!).  But we might as well be throwing our cash down the karzi. 

And on an environmental tip, the Energy Saving Trust equates this to 1,600,000 tonnes of emitted CO2 from stereos, 480,000 tonnes from TVs, 390,000 tonnes from consoles and 100,00 tonnes from DVD players.  And this is only when they're not being used!

Right then, so if we had something that could tell us how many quids we were wasting and when - would we change our idle ways?

Er, like, yeah!  Especially if (a) it was a cool gadget (b) we got cheap bills (c) we kinda like the planet. 

Well, funnily enough we know of a couple of nifty new electricity awareness devices that do just the job...

Top Tip 

The super cool Wattson is by far the SWSU fave. The display is portable, which means you can take it around your home and it'll tell you how much your appliances are using and costing - whether they're on full power or standby. You'll find out stuff like the fact that your microwave costs you £50 a year just to tell the time and wait for you to ask it to do something.  It's really quite addictive!

Wattson by DIY Kyoto is made from reclaimed wood and acrylic: £350  Delivery time 4-6 weeks

Or for a less good-looking but cheaper alternative try the Electrisave: £79.95 Delivery up to 7 days