Lights

It’s been a week and I have been thinking about my naughty wasteful ways. Of course I have been working on reducing this waste, but I confess!! - I have left lights on in every room. I have kept the monitor on, blissfully thinking that the “screensaver” helps reduce energy (it doesn’t). I throw out tons of plastic. I let the refrigerator stand wide open as I try to make sense of whatever is in there - usually rotting fruits and vegetables. And on it goes.

The One Tonne Challenge doesn’t cover any of this. By themselves these little things may not seem to amount to much, but overtime and all together – yowza.

Did you try the One Tonne Challenge or the US calculators? Did you figure out your GHG contribution? Was it fun? Yeah, it’s a real hoot. According to the One Tonne calculator, my annual contribution is 2.41 tonnes. But I know it’s more. They need to do a better job in covering more areas. But they assure me….

As I mentioned, we’re going to start off by looking at waste and ways to cut back.

TO DO this week:

Let’s look at lights.
How fun! Now some of you are well ahead of the game on this one, but I thought I’d start small and build. So if you’re a proud light conservationist, bear with me.

Lights Out
Take note of when lights are on in your home and office when they don’t need to be on and start turning them off. If you have kids and/or a partner (and co-workers), ask them to turn them off when they leave the room (sometimes easier said than done).

Better Bulbs
Now many of you have patted yourselves on the back about going out and buying compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFBs). And so you should! Why? Five per cent of the energy that goes into a typical incandescent bulb comes out as light. The other 95% comes out as heat. Compact fluorescent bulbs give off 90% less heat, use 75% less energy and last up to 10 times longer than a regular bulb (up to 7 years!).

It’s a no-brainer! Jane and I are four bulbs away from being incandescent free! We’ve been slowly buying them when we are by the hardware store or in IKEA. As some of you know, these bulbs cost about $7 to $11 in multi-packs of two or three. Best value and less packaging! I encourage you to pick them up as your budget allows until you too are free of your energy sucking incandescents. In fact, this weekend, drop by your local hardware store and buy a multipack if you still have regular bulbs.

Yeah Yeah, So What?
If every household in Canada replaced just one incandescent with an Energy Star qualified CFB, Canadians would cut their GHG emissions by nearly 400,000 tonnes, and save $73 million in energy costs ($55 savings per bulb).

Imagine if every household in the USA did the same! – Collectively, Americans would reduce their emissions by close to 41 million tonnes.

Now buying CFB’s shouldn’t give you license to keep the lights on 24/7. It’s still pollutes the air and it’s not very healthy. And it is a misconception that turning them on and off expends lots of energy. I encourage you to turn the lights off when you don’t need them.

Are you as mad about facts and figures as I am? Check this out….

GHG emissions from one incandescent light bulb:
• .357 tonnes of coal just to create it – that’s right one light bulb.
• .842 tonnes of carbon dioxide (and a little bit of sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxides) are generated when using that light bulb per year. That’s just one! What if you have 15?

Average percentage of light use contributing to one’s overall GHG emissions
2.4%

Percentage of GHG emission reduction in light use by replacing incandescent bulbs with CFBs.
70%

Remember: Lights Out!

I got all this information from the following….
Resources One Tonne Challenge (Canada)
Climate Change Solutions (Canada)
How Stuff Works (Canada)
Atmosclear Climate Club (USA)