Electrical gadgets and gizmos left on standby or being charged unnecessarily waste approximately £740million of energy in UK each year.

This startling statistic comes from the Energy Saving Trust (EST) comes as the UK faces rising energy prices and growing concern about environmental issues.

Although the EST figures show the £13 yearly cost savings per person may not make a huge dent in energy bills, we are relying increasingly on electronic and electrical devices. Overall however, the environmental costs are greater as these devices coupled with other household appliances mean the average UK household now produces more CO2 annually than the average car.

There are various figures produced but an average PC or monitor will consume about 200 watts per hour, though some can use far more (most light bulbs use 40-60 watts). LCD monitors use less than CRT monitors. Notebooks use around 15-45 watts per hour and ink jet printers, which use as little as 12 watts while printing and 5 watts while idling, use less than laser printers.

As a result, the pressure is now on consumer electronics manufacturers to reduce any excess consumption of electricity by household appliances, including computers, peripherals and other devices as a major priority.

The EST is endorsing those that use less or equal to 1.5 watts of energy on standby, and less or equal to 250 watts in operation. The P70 series LCD TV range from Sharp Electronics has just been endorsed by the EST: other accredited products can be found on the EST website.

Also many Windows versions have power-saving features available. Go to the Start Menu and select Control Panel, then double-click on Power Options. From here you can specify when to power down the monitor and hard disk or the entire PC when idle.

Some of these functions are not available unless the computer's [JB] BIOS is set to allow power saving. Try pressing DEL or F12 on your keyboard (depending on the type of computer) while your computer is starting up.

Also, if your version of Windows does not support power saving features, the BIOS may have options Windows doesn't. See our feature on using the BIOS in issue 160 for more information.

Most Macintosh computers come with power management features and Macintosh processors (made by IBM and Motorola) use substantially lower electricity than their PC counterparts.

People should check the 'Energy Saver control panel to enable the hibernation or sleep mode when the system is idle or to turn it off automatically if the computer isn't needed for a while.

Macintosh monitors, use about the same power as a PC's so be sure that your monitor is set to "go to sleep" if left idling.

Those who are interested can check how much juice their PC uses online here.