Although yet to come to Greece, energy consumption is fast becoming a hot topic. In the UK, it’s now impossible to watch a single news bulletin or television advertising break without hearing about the effects on the environment, climate change or your ‘carbon footprint’ (how much carbon dioxide you are responsible for producing in a year). Everything is going green – even the washing powder!

So it comes as no surprise that someone has sat down and worked out the energy consumption that all those little red lights consume. And, shockingly, it’s quite a lot. Combined, a household with a television, hi-fi, DVD player, computer, printer and phone charger will use about 40-60 watts. That’s not including if you leave your computer in standby mode (rather than switching it off) or leave your washing machine on after it’s finished its cycle. The calculations have shown that if an average family of four switched off all the appliances after use, they would save around 60 Euro a year and around 0.25 tonnes of carbon dioxide.

In Greece and throughout Europe, though, we have one small problem that those in the UK don’t have – socket switches (or lack of them). In the UK it’s simply a flick of the switch at the wall socket and all the appliances power down. Here we don’t have that luxury as we would physically have to pull the plugs out of the wall sockets to effectively power everything down. The quick fix solution is to invest in a power strip with a switch– the four plugs in one kind. If you also buy one with surge protection you’ll be helping to ensure that your equipment is protected against power surges too. Then, you switch off the power strip and everything connected to it powers down as well. There are remote controlled and automated versions of this concept coming on to the UK market now, although they’ve yet to reach us here in the rest of Europe.

And would you like to save even more? As the winter months approach, here are some other top money saving ideas courtesy of the UK Energy Saving Trust that will lower your bills and also help the environment:

1. Turn your thermostat down. By reducing the temperature in your home by just 1 degree you could save up to 10% on your energy bills.
2. Turn the thermostat down on your water heater (if you have one). It should not need to be more than 60 degrees Celsius.
3. Close your shutters (and curtains if you have them) at night to reduce heat loss through your windows.
4. Always turn off lights when you leave a room.
5. If you are not completely filling your washing machine, dishwasher, or tumble dryer use the economy or half-load mode if it has one.
6. Only boil as much water as you need. When boiling a kettle, make sure you fill to at least the minimum mark though.
7. Fix dripping taps. In one week, a leaking hot water tap can waste enough water to fill a bath.
8. Use energy saving light bulbs. There is a wider variety now than there used to be, and over the lifetime of the bulb they could save you up to 120 Euro.

Whilst these figures are aimed at the consumer market, the same also applies to businesses - if not more so because a business is likely to have more equipment where power can be saved. I heard of a story over the summer where Greek state workers were given time off during the heatwave in order to conserve electricity and prevent power cuts - only, the workers left the air conditioning on so that when they returned to work the following day their office would be cool! This example serves really to show the point that in the business envioronment, if you do want to save electricity and costs you'll also need your employees' buy-in.

This articles was written by Malcolm Wright for Thessaloniki Press.