In a previous post, I made the following statement about recycling and environmental awareness about littering:
If we, as a whole, think any one deed, one action, has no impact on anything, consider the fact that in the U.S. alone, the estimated population is 301,139,947 people. If everyone tossed out a piece of paper out their car window the size of a paperback book page thinking that one deed would do no harm, we’ve thrown out the equivalent of over 1 million paperback books on the road. That is why we can’t relax in turning off lights when we aren’t using them, or doing our part to car pool, or other acts that are deemed simple and small, in preserving our planet.
I would like to bring awareness to another little staple we all are probably guilty of – light.
We have many rooms in our lives. Bedrooms, home office rooms, garages, dining rooms, living rooms, our work offices, and other rooms at work.
When we leave a room do we always turn the lights off? I admit, I never used to.. I used to leave them on “knowing” I’d be back. But let’s think of something. At home, I used to leave the office light on when I left the room, and at work, I have 2 offices, and used to leave the lights on in my “outer office”. Then I thought about the following:
If everyone in the country had the same perspective, and if each of us in the country, with a very rough estimate that 70% of the population being adults, or 210,797,963 light using people and if we each have left one light on in two different rooms for more than ONLY 10 minutes, without anyone being in that room, means that we’ve left an empty room light bulb burning for a total of 8,021 years.
If we’ve left the lights on in 2 rooms for about 30 minutes each,collectively as a country, we’ve left a light bulb burning for a total of 24,063 years.
Wow. At work, they have rooms with motion detectors and timers. When a room is left for more than a few minutes, the lights go off, and when someone enters, the lights come back on. See if you can convince your workplace to try and follow the same example.
As for us, we need to reach up and turn off that light switch when we leave a room.
Our environment DOES depend on us, and how we approach our natural resources. My estimates only take our lonely country into consideration. I don’t even want to think about the world as a whole.
