Thank you, Mr. Ingles

Prior Lake High School Communications teacher Nick Ingels recently posed the following question: What is the leading cause of preventable energy waste? Great question, Mr. Ingles, I'm glad you asked.

Well, after extensive research I am going to have to go with home electronics. According to a study by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, home electronics such as TVs, DVD players, cable boxes, computers, video game consoles (even when idle) and phone or electronic gadget chargers (especially when still plugged in and detached from the device) account for 5 percent of total domestic energy consumption. If this equipment were plugged into power strips that were turned off when not in use, we could reduce our annual energy costs by more than $3 billion and carbon emissions by 18 million tons.

Wow, that is A LOT of preventable energy waste!