Green Girl

Around my home and various offices, I like to think of myself as something of a light-switch warrior…If I enter and leave an area, I turn off the lights stealthily. I have heard some grumbling in the public restrooms about someone constantly turning off the lights; however, I bet if they knew that leaving lights and fans on when you’re not in the room costs money unnecessarily while also contributing to the carbon emissions that cause our climate change, they’d join me in my light-switching endeavors!

According to How To Save The Planet, the Discovery show Mythbusters has proven that the power surge that occurs when you switch a light on only uses as much power as leaving it on for a fraction of a second, with the exception of fluorescent lights (and the power surge required to start one of those up is only worth about 23 seconds of the energy wasted by leaving it on unnecessarily).  So that old yarn about wasting as much money turning lights on and off as leaving them on is a big old myth.

So how about it? Make it a game…attack the light switches in public restrooms when you’re out to eat, at work, or at home.

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