Overfilling your kettle for a cuppa wastes £40 a year

HOUSEHOLDS waste hundreds of pounds worth of energy a year overfilling kettles, washing clothes and leaving lights on, analysis shows.

Three in five Britons admitted to using more water than necessary to make a cup of tea despite the habit wasting £40 worth of energy a year.

Taken together, energy-wasting habits such as washing clothes at hotter temperatures than necessary and leaving the hot tap on while washing up can add up to £205 to household bills, according to analysis carried out by comparison site Uswitch.

It comes as energy bills rose by 5 per cent in January due to an increase in the energy price cap, which limits the rate at which households pay for their power use.

Overfilling kettles emerged as the most costly drain on household energy bills. However, boiling water in a saucepan without using a lid adds £33 the average bill, the study found. Using more water than necessary adds a further £17 a year.

The comparison site said running the dishwasher when it is not full adds an average of almost £10 a year to energy bills. Washing up by hand can also prove a costly habit. Running a hot tap can waste 100 litres in 10 minutes and 26p in energy costs, meaning households doing this once a week could run up an additional £12 a year.

Polling carried out alongside the analysis found that two-thirds of households set their washing machine to 40 degrees, which costs £20 more a year than washing at 30 degrees. Almost half admitted to running a washing machine when it is not full, despite an extra weekly wash adding up to £8 a year to the average bill.

Ben Gallizzi, energy expert at Uswitch, said: “We’ve all been guilty at times of leaving the lights on or overfilling the kettle, but it’s important to remember that these habits can all add hundreds of pounds a year to our bills.

“Bills are higher this winter than they were last year, but there are a lot of ways households can cut their energy use.

“Saving money might be as simple as using the eco-mode on your white goods and making sure you only run them when full.”