Some top mobile phone companies have come together in an effort to raise awareness about the loss of energy when users leave their chargers on even after their phones are fully charged.
Thought to be one of the major causes of energy wastage worldwide, the companies aim to curb this loss with this effort. While an individual charger being left switched on after the phone is charged may not amount to a huge wastage of energy, considering the number of chargers out there, it does add up to a significant amount. It is estimated that about two thirds of the energy consumed by mobile devices is wasted in this fashion.
LG, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung Electronics, and Sony Ericsson have developed a rating system that will grade chargers according to the energy they consume. Five star rated chargers with power consumption of less than 0.03 watts are the best, while anything that eats up over 0.5 watts gets no stars. Apart from this, there have been other measures like promoting the use of existing chargers with new phones - instead of bundling new chargers with every purchase. While this has been implemented by NTT DoCoMo, it is yet to be adopted by other mainstream manufacturers.