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Women are greener than men at home

Globe in the clouds

Women are more switched on than men when it comes to saving energy around the house - according to a new survey

A poll commissioned by the Energy Saving Trust - to mark Energy Saving Week - discovered that the average UK household creates approximately six tonnes of carbon dioxide every year. Each home spends £17 per week on fuel and power, which works out at more than £900 per year. In fact, householders could save around £250 a year simply by being more energy-efficient.

Overall, around £6.8 billion of energy is wasted in the UK every year, enough to give every man, woman and child an additional £113 per annum.

However, the green message is having an impact among British householders. More people, for example, are buying energy-saving lightbulbs. Eighty-four per cent of the women polled have bought them, compared to 72 per cent of men.

Then there's that well-known home energy-waster: leaving the TV on standby overnight. Here, women (84%) also fare more favourably than men (72%).

And next time you forget to turn the bathroom light off, it may be worth considering these other findings from the survey, particularly the simple energy and money-saving trick of switching off appliances around the house:

* The average household wastes £28 each year by leaving appliances on standby. Across the UK this is equivalent to the annual output of more than two 700MW power stations.

* In most homes, lighting accounts for 10–15% of the electricity bill.

* Households in the UK now spend around 8% of their electricity bill on standby power.

* UK households spend £1.8bn every year on electricity used in consumer electronic products.

* Set-top boxes for digital TV are inexpensive to buy, but by 2010 they could be costing UK households £287 million every year in electricity - or £12 per household.

* Every year TVs in the UK use £60m worth of electricity, just waiting to be switched on.

* DVDs and video recorders consume around £50m worth of electricity each year while on standby, producing more than 160,000 tonnes of CO2

* If everyone boiled only the water they needed to make a cup of tea instead of filling the kettle every time, we could save enough electricity in a year to run more than half of the street lighting in the country.