All chargers draw a small amount of power whenever they are plugged in to a power outlet. That’s because they continuously transform high-voltage AC current to lower-voltage DC current. Take your average cell phone charger — it draws about 4 watts when actively charging, and about 0.25 watts at other times. If you never unplug the charger, about 66% of its electricity consumption will come from this standby power use.

If the 250 million Americans who own a cell phone always unplugged their charger, it could save 500 million kWh each year and prevent almost 350,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions — that’s like taking 80,000 cars off the road!

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