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The Office – Electrical Gadgets

The production of even the simplest electrical devices can have an enormous negative environmental impact. That is why producers all over the world now strive to minimize the impact of their production processes. But not all companies participate in this endeavour. Instead they wait until directives come from the EU, for instance, which force them to diminish their environmental impact. We can help in making environmentally friendlier products win the competition by choosing environmentally friendly producers and devices which have environmental or energy saving labels.

Many hazardous chemicals and cancer causing agents such as cadmium and mercury can be very detrimental to the environment. Therefore it is very important to recycle used and old electrical devices.

The energy use of gadgets is defined with energy labels, such as Energy Star and the European energy label. It is possible to get info about energy use by reading what’s on the appliance or to use special measuring devices. In this way you can find out how much energy each appliance is using and you can calculate the cost both to yourself and to the environment.

Around 10% of the energy use of electrical appliances is often because of stand-by use. In this mode the appliances waste energy without being used. This only means a higher electricity bill. This kind of stand-by use is often called “electricity leak”. The easiest way to minimize this stand-by use is simply to turn devices off completely and most preferably to unplug them from the socket.

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