Time to wave good bye to standby

Few things irritate the committed environmentalist like the red glow of the standby light.

According to figures from the Energy Saving Trust, the UK emits over three million tonnes a year of CO2 as a result of electrical equipment being left on standby. That's a mind-bogglingly large amount of pollution as a direct result of appliances that are not even in use.

But environmental concerns aside, the red light should also be a cause of considerable irritation to anyone trying to live on a budget, not to mention any conscientious financial director trying to tackle ever-climbing energy bills.

Research shows that every PC and monitor that is always on standby costs up to £45 a year to power, and while this already seems a lot, the cost quickly soars if you consider a business with hundreds or even thousands of PCs and monitors – not to mention fax machines, printers and photocopiers – being left with their red lights glowing each night.

The answer to this environmental and financial profligacy is simple: turn off your machines. But the combination of our innate laziness and the appalling design of many electrical appliances means this simple green measure can often prove beyond us.

My (admittedly cheap and cheerful) stereo is a case in point. The machine has no off switch. Sure, it has a button labelled power but this simply switches it to standby mode and activates the dreaded red light. Even when "off", it still draws 12.2 watts an hour. But to actually turn the stereo off you have to move the TV in the corner of the room and scrabble around on the floor to unplug the infuriating machine. Faced with similar scenarios, it is little surprise to find that many people leave their electrical kit on standby.

It is this problem that electronics company Domia is attempting to solve with its Bye Bye Standby device. An admirably simple solution, it is a plug in switch with a remote control that turns devices off at the wall.

You simply plug in the device, which draws less than one watt an hour, and then plug the offending always-on appliance into the new switch. A simple wireless remote can then be used to cut the power to the standby device at a flick of a switch.

The net result is that my stereo is now always off when not in use, and I've made a cut, albeit small, in both my energy bills and carbon emissions.

Domia claims that independent research has shown that the average home would save between £38 and £40 a year on its energy bills by using its Bye Bye devices on standby appliances.

All this is great for the domestic market, but where the device has the potential to deliver more sizable cost and carbon savings is in the office. The remote control can be easily programmed to turn on and off up to five machines, but there is also a group setting that allows the user to turn off a large number of machines with one click. It is easy to imagine an office cleaner clicking the remote and instantly ensuring every monitor, fax machine and printer on a floor is off.

In our office, where some of my colleagues are less than conscientious about turning off their monitors each night and our flat screen monitors draw just over 12 watts an hour when on standby, the opportunities for cost and carbon savings are significant.

The only downside to the Bye Bye Standby (besides its infantile name) is that while it is an elegantly simple solution to the standby problem, it is a little too simplistic for many devices. Simply cutting the power to a computer that has been inadvertently left on would cause considerable technical problems. Equally, you could use the device to turn off video recorders, microwaves and the like, but only if you enjoy the prospect of reprogramming the clock every time you switch them back on again.

But sadly, until electronics manufacturers start delivering on their promises and only produce low-power devices that integrate convenient turn off technology directly into the appliance, Bye Bye Standby represents one of the best answers available to the dreaded red light.