Energy inefficient?

[witch way?]

What's the most energy inefficient or wasteful gadget around? My pet hate is patio heaters. At least with a firepit you get warm toes. 2nd would be not switching off christmas/garden lights after about 1 or 2am when not many people are around to see them. I suppose 3rd is standby lights. Its not a question about the amount of energy used - if its being enjoyed then to my mind its OK - its the amount thats wasted that saddens me. ww.

[Brij]

I don't know about what gadget is the most energy wasting, but I can't stand when people are dependant on washing machines. I understand that it's good to get things through sometimes, but people forget that hand-washing is fine too, and doesn't take too long if you let things soak a bit in-between doing other things.

This is coming to a head with my future flatmate demanding that we organise a washing machine (we're only living there for a year anyway...), completely overlooking the fact that people have lived without them for centuries!

[red]

i really hate patio heaters too - I mean.. you are trying to warm up the world!!

i also dislike irons to.. more to do with the task than the energy tho... dunno where mine is.. in a box somewhere.. we moved in 2006...

[hamster]

I'd probably agree with you about patio heaters: if it's cold, put a jumper on or go inside. We do not live in France. Deal with it.

In the interests of broadening the discussion, though... Hmm, I don't know. I was tempted to say tumble driers, as they use an awful lot of energy to do something that the sun can do for free, but if you lived in a titchy flat or had children in reusable nappies in winter then I suppose they're really useful...

A friend of my mum's had a potato peeling machine. I must have looked so disbelieving when she told me that she immediately qualified it by saying, 'Oh, it's okay, I only use it for new potatoes.' Peeling new potatoes???? Though I think it was more the fact that she had a whole cupboard full of similarly specialised gadgets (potato ricer, bread maker, etc) that she used about once every other year.

Hmm, it's quite difficult (aside from patio heaters!) to identify a single gadget that's useless, because so many people need different things. If I had room for a bread maker, I'd probably use it all the time, but to other people it would just gather dust in a cupboard, whereas to me a tumble drier seems like a pointless extravagance, but to someone in a flat with two small children it wouldn't. It's more the over-reliance on gadgets that leads people to have a machine for EVERYTHING even if they never use it or be permanently plugged into something (she says, prising her fingers away from the laptop keys) and never consider that they could actually do something like whisking egg whites or kneading bread themselves...

[Millymollymandy]

I'd probably agree with you about patio heaters: if it's cold, put a jumper on or go inside. We do not live in France. Deal with it.

...

Hey, we have patio heaters here too! Mostly in the outdoors areas of restaurants!

[Annpan]

Those big leaf blowers... I have never understood them???
What is wrong with a brush?

[ina]

What is wrong with a brush?

Too small, and doesn't make a noise. You can't seriously imagine a MAN using them???

[MKG]

It's not so much the washing machines (I can think of a million reasons for their existence) or even dishwashers - it's the totally unwarranted things like George's Lean Mean Fat Machine (you don't have a grill?), the ergonomically-designed keyboard (tried using one?), and any of the various versions of the multi-chopper (I have a few knives).

But the most energy-demanding of the lot? It has to be the automobile. Not much longer than a century ago, the world trundled along without it. Now, civilisation would collapse without it. Somewhere in there, we went wrong.

[ina]

But the most energy-demanding of the lot? It has to be the automobile. Not much longer than a century ago, the world trundled along without it. Now, civilisation would collapse without it. Somewhere in there, we went wrong.

Add air travel to that.... Equally wrong.

Just read another interesting book called "A history maker" (Allasdair Gray). Kind of utopia - set in 2230 or so; no more cars, everybody back on horse for travelling, some first aid planes and air ships - and best of all, no more cities (as they realised that small communities are more viable), and each of these small communities supplied by a very futuristic power plant: a real plant, i.e. like a tree, that assimilates everything you need from soil, air and waste... They also have large gardens, as the power plants don't seem to do such a good job for fresh veg.
(Oh, and women run the communities, while men play war games and kill each other. )

[contadino]

I'm entirely with you on patio heaters, leaf blowers, tumble dryers, cars and air travel.

But what about disposable batteries? I have a solar battery charger (£7 from Maplins I think) and it's got me thinking about the energy used to create and dispose of 'conventional' batteries. Surely it's more waste than it produces? At least with rechargeables, you get, say, 100 charges before you have to bin them.