Don’t fill the kettle, fill the cup

• Boiling one cup of water instead of a full kettle would save £2.7 million a day in the UK
• Save up to five times the amount of energy by boiling the water you need

Britain is a nation of tea drinks with 165 million cups* drunk every day. But while we enjoy the comforting taste of a cup of Rosie Lee, the country is also nation of energy wasters when it comes to making a brew: Brits could be wasting up to £2.7 million a day overfilling the kettle.

Energenie, specialist in energy saving products, is encouraging the nation to measure out the cups of water needed every time they boil a kettle. Relying on a kettle’s in-built measurement gauge can be inaccurate and although not everyone boils a full kettle of water every time they make tea, just overestimating by one cup can cost more than half a million a day in wasted power – a problem recently highlighted by the Energy Saving Trust.

The daily cost and environmental impact on households and business when:

• Over boiling by one cup of water a day is £561,000
• Over boiling the kettle by five cups is £3,300,000
• Boling one cup of water uses 5,775,000 KgCO2
• Boiling a full kettle of water uses 31,350,000 KgCO2

Alan Tadd, Managing Director of Energenie says, “Even we are staggered at the amount of energy and money wasted when boiling a full kettle of water. If people took more care measuring out a cup instead of blindly guesstimating the amount of water, they can save a lot of energy and money on their electricity bill. Just making a slight effort and changing habits can help the environment and put more pennies in the pocket.”

With the kettle one of the household biggest energy draining offenders, overfilling also has a major impact on the environment. Boiling one cup instead of a full kettle would cut 23.5 million KgCO2 per day off the nation’s carbon footprint – that is the equivalent of 28,197 economy flights from London to New York.

Households and businesses looking to save energy and money elsewhere can invest in a low cost energy monitoring device, such as Energenie’s Energy Saving Power Meter, to identify what appliances are the worst offenders and where energy and costs can be reduced.