Wall warts-it's an ugly nickname. But those external electrical adapters plugged into outlets all around your house, powering and recharging your small appliances and handheld gadgets, richly deserve the moniker.

The stealthiest and most insidious wasters of electricity around, these adapters (also known as power bricks) are everywhere. More than 1 billion are sold every year, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC); about 6 to 10 billion are in use worldwide, and the average American typically relies on five of them at home and perhaps as many at the office, to feed cell phones, laptops, MP3 players, cordless phones, and who knows what else. With the consumer electronics industry growing at about 10 percent per year, we're only going to see more of these warm little devils. In total, power adapters consume $17 billion worth of electricity per year in the United States alone. That represents 6 percent of our national electric bill.

You might be wondering: why they exist
U.S. homes are wired with 120-volt alternating-current (AC) power. But many of our gadgets and appliances require low-voltage direct-current (DC) power to charge and/or run. So just about everything you plug in nowadays comes with some kind of add-on to convert the high-voltage AC power to low-voltage DC power.

Some adapters are internal and invisible (such as those within television sets, which according to CNET can use more than 10 watts of electricity in standby mode-equivalent to as much as a quarter of the power the TV uses when it's on). Sadly, there's nothing much we can do about them.

The external kind, the warm wall warts that consume two to six watts of power whenever they're plugged in, are the ones we need to attack. Most power supplies are designed not for maximum efficiency but for minimum cost. We demand cheaper gadgets, and we get them. We pay later, however, in the form of higher electricity bills.

As it happens, the government is on the case, and the Environmental Protection Agency's Energy Star team is working on more stringent national standards for power adapters. Energy Star first started identifying adapters that were at least 35 percent more efficient than others in 2005, and a year later it also tackled battery-charging systems contained in small household appliances and power tools. Some states-most notably, California-have come up with their own power-adapter performance standards, choosing not to wait for a national standard that may come along some time in the future.

Minimizing the damage: what to look for
It's not a well-known fact, but some power adapters do have the Energy Star stamp of approval, and they're worth seeking out when shopping for new electronics. If you're looking at cordless phones, battery chargers, or any other small appliance, and all else is equal, lean toward the one with the Energy Star adapter. And tell your friends. It'll take a village-millions of villages, in fact-to tackle this problem effectively.

Simply unplugging your cell phone charger might seem to have little impact on your personal energy consumption or electricity bill. But if hundreds of millions of us unplugged together, we'd see a huge net benefit that would help us all.

Here are some other ways to get started:

Now you're talking: get educated and evangelize
Websites such as those of the NRDC and EfficientPowerSupplies.org are good places to do a little reading about power-adapter technologies and why this is such a big problem. Get up to speed, and then tell your friends why they need to unplug.

Feeding at the trough: use power strips
The simplest single step you can take to control your wall-wart waste is to gather them all up, plug them into a power strip, and then shut the power strip off when you're not using or charging the connected gadgets. Large electronics and home-products stores have a plethora of power strips to choose from, some costing as little as $5. Make sure the one you choose has an on-off switch and enough space between the plugs to accommodate all the weirdly shaped power adapters you want to attach. You may need to strategize a bit, spreading a few power strips around your house and plugging in gadgets in groups based on how and when they are used or when they need to be charged.

As you shop, you'll notice all sorts of high-end power strips with prices that range up to $60. Those equipped with surge suppression, which protects your gadgets from unpredictable power spikes, are nice to have, especially where your computer is plugged in. But they're not essential. You'll also find power strips specially designed to work with elaborate home theater systems whose TV, cable box, DVR, DVD player, and speakers all need to be plugged into what is probably a limited number of outlets behind your entertainment center.

"Smart" power strips can even sense when one connected gadget is turned off and then turn off everything else related to it. Power down your computer, for example, and the printer, speakers, and scanner will all power down as well. And yes, the power strip itself does consume a couple of watts of energy, but the net savings from the three or more adapters you plug into it more than offsets its power use.

A port in the storm: power up via USB
Some very small gadgets-the iPod Shuffle is one good example-recharge not with a power adapter but rather via your computer's USB port. This ultra-low-power connection helps run computer peripherals like mice, but a small cottage industry of USB-powered gadgets has sprung up as well, using the same method to provide power to devices such as small hard drives, fans, coffee mug warmers, and even tiny desktop vacuum cleaners. Take advantage of this technology when you can. Its minimal power draw is laudable. Devices to split one USB port into many are cheap and easy to find, so you never need to run out of ports. Check the USB Gadgets blog for a quick taste of what's available out there.

Step by step: small changes lead to big savings
Here's some final food for thought: In February, the Energy Analysis Department of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, released a report that predicted the potential energy savings if various Energy Star and California benchmarks for power-adapter performance were met. Their findings, based on estimating the number of adapters in use today and tomorrow and multiplying the projected cost of energy, are amazing.

"Even with modest gains in market penetration," the report notes, "the Energy Star external power adapters and battery charger programs are expected to save a cumulative 1.5 terawatt-hours (1.5 billion kilowatt-hours, or kWh) of electricity between 2005 and 2010, increasing to 24 tWh by 2025. With slightly higher market penetrations and the additional impact of California standards, savings increase to 64 tWh through 2025. Adding a U.S. national standard could save 180 tWh over the same period."

According to the NRDC, if all the adapters that exist today met the standards set in California and in the Energy Star spec, we'd already be cutting the world's electricity bill by more than a billion dollars a year and eliminating the need for six large power plants.

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