Home Appliances

Public policies in many countries seek to steer manufacturers and consumers toward using more energy-efficient goods. This article examines one of the largest uses of electrical goods—electrical appliances for home—that are produced and purchased in large and increasing quantities.

A home or domestic appliance is a machine used to accomplish routine housekeeping tasks, such as food preservation (e.g., refrigerators or freezers), cooking (e.g., stoves, ovens, microwave ovens), cleaning (e.g., dishwashers, washing machines, dryers). Household appliances consume a lot of energy—on average, a quarter of all the energy used in the [Page 244]house. Furthermore, they can affect the environment through their “associate” consumptions, for example, the use of water and soaps, as well as their disposal.

Home appliances are usually referred to as major household appliances (such as stoves and refrigerators) and small appliances (such as stereos, computer equipment, and television sets). Major appliances are large, difficult to move, and generally fixed in place to some extent. Small appliances are portable or semiportable. They look small and appear not to be heavy users of energy compared with major appliances. Nevertheless, as the International Energy Agency warns, by 2010 there will be over 3.5 billion mobile phone subscribers, 2 billion televisions in use around the world, and 1 billion personal computers.

All appliances are intended to perform, enable, or assist in performing a job or changing a status; for example, the temperature of a room. Most are not necessities but, instead, make our lives easier, save us time, or provide entertainment. In any case, they are a growing part of our lives, from major items like televisions to a host of small gadgets. As these small devices gain in popularity, they became an important and growing portion of household energy consumption.

In developed countries, appliances that previously used the majority of electricity, that is, major appliances, are close to saturation levels. The stabilization of ownership rates and the improvement in efficiency of these appliances has made their share of residential electricity consumption fall. In contrast, the ownership of small electronic equipment (as well as the use of lighting equipment) has increased in several world regions. In developing countries, although the ownership level for major appliances is already high in urban areas, increased access to electricity in rural areas and growing urbanization is driving up overall ownership levels, and hence electricity consumption.

The result is that household appliance energy efficiency has increased by one-third in the last 20 years, but household energy consumption has decreased by only about 2 percent. This is because of the increase in the rate of equipment purchase. Furthermore, even when efficiency improvements have been made to small appliances, any savings have been cancelled out by the demand for equipment that provides more functionality or is larger or more powerful, and therefore uses more electricity.

This increase in the equipment purchase rate also brings to the forefront the problem of discarding home electronics. Electronic waste, which encompasses loosely discarded, surplus, obsolete, and broken electrical or electronic devices, has become more and more of a problem and causes serious health and pollution issues. Electronic equipment can contain serious contaminants, such as lead, cadmium, beryllium, and brominated flame retardants. Recycling and disposal of this waste involves significant risk to workers and communities, and great care must be taken to avoid both unsafe exposure in recycling operations and materials such as heavy metals leaching from landfills and incinerator ashes.

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