Appliances are machines that help us at home. Large appliances include washing machines, tumble dryers, ovens, refrigerators, freezers and dishwashers. There are many smaller ones too such as microwave ovens, vacuum cleaners, kettles, coffee machines, toasters and so on.

Energy Efficient Appliances just mean machines that use less electricity to do the exact same job. Sometimes they cost a little more to buy or rent, but the savings in electricity bills can be quite impressive. Electricity savings are great also because less electricity is needed and if everyone used less then the dirty power stations using coal can be retired sooner and the climate ultimately benefits!

In many countries, appliances have a colourful sticker showing how much electricity is used on a scale A to G where A is very good and G is very bad. If the sticker is not there then we need to look in the technical manual and find the power consumption number to compare different machines. The lower the power consumption number, the better.

Some modern machines like washing machines and dishwashers have an ECO setting which is designed to save more electricity.

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