February 23, 2012

Who regulates and oversees energy efficiency in our products?

The Energy Saving Trust, along with other bodies is the organization that is heavily involved in making us more aware of climate change. The way they go about this is by offering advice to building professionals on how to build an energy efficient home, they also provide the same sort of advice to housing associations and other housing services. They provide support to people who are planning to conserve energy whilst travelling by car or van. The Energy Saving Trust, provide a product labeling scheme where they label energy efficient products that have their seal of approval. The accreditation for this scheme is deemed robust and only truly efficient appliances will earn the right to display the ‘Energy Saving Trust Recommended’ logo. The logo is now widely recognized and a sign to lookout for when shopping for energy saving appliances. The Energy Saving Trust are joined by other industry experts when deciding whether a product really deserves to bear the logo.

The Energy Saving Trust is a non-profit organization supported in a joint effort by the government and private sector companies. The fact that they operate on a non-profit basis further supports the fact that the people involved in the processes are sincere and their work is morally good. The Energy Saving Trust operates within the UK and support all areas that request their support. [Read more...]

Energy Consumption in a Kitchen

In the average home the kitchen is the room where the most energy consumption would occur. So, of course with global warming being a hot topic the issue with all these wonderful time saving devices is, how much energy does it use? Can we justify using all this energy just because it saves us time? Should we sacrifice the time to save the energy? Well it can be quite interesting when you learn that although the average dishwasher does use electricity, it uses less water than hand washing dishes by hand. So, one side of the argument weighs the other side out. Both electricity and water are both important and valued so we need to converse both. We could say that it is fine to use the dishwasher as it saves water although it is using electricity.

There are many ways in which you can use a washing machine in an energy efficient way. A well known factor is what temperature you program your cycle to use. The lower the temperature selected the better, as the machine will use less energy to get the water to the desired temperature. Whether you have a cheap washing machine that you don’t expect the drum bearings to last a long time on or an expensive washing machine, you should not under load your washing machine as it will mean in the long run you will do more washes and therefore use more energy (as well as wear out the parts quicker). Make sensible decisions when loading your washing machine and organizing what to wash. [Read more...]