There’s been a lot of controversy concerning health and the environment. People talk about switching to ‘green’ energy and the dangers of RFK jr. and fossil fuels, but these are big things, expensive things that we, as individuals, can’t really do much about. In the grand scheme of things, it won’t be the huge decisions that will make the biggest impact. It’ll be the little things. The small, seemingly insignificant decisions that YOU (yes, YOU) could make easily to improve your health and the health of the world we live in.
Effort level: ★☆☆
As simple as it may seem, turning off the lights whenever you’re not in a room has a HUGE impact.
We’ll make an example with a young guy named Phil (you’ll be seeing a lot of Phil in these columns). He lives in a two bedroom apartment with a kitchen, bathroom, living room, dining room and main hallway. Each room has one light, the kitchen, bathroom, and living room have two, the dining room one, and the main hallway one. (Pretty swanky apartment) That’s a total of 10 lights. Now let’s assume that each light consists of two lightbulbs. That’s twenty light bulbs. An average LED light bulb uses 0.01 kWhs (kilowatt hours) of energy per hour. Now let’s assume that, for some reason, Phil decides that he wants to turn on all of his lights at the beginning of his day (Let’s say around 6 am, because Phil likes to wake up early) and turn them all off when he goes to sleep. (Around 9 am, because I like the number 15 and it’s easier to multiply) Way to go, Phil. You just used, in a single day, about 3 kWhs of energy. That’s 90 kWhs a month. Good luck paying that light bill with your McDonalds salary.
Let us also assume that Phil gets all his energy from the local powerplant, which is powered by the burning of fossil fuels. Because of Phil’s constant use of his lights, that power plant needs to burn more energy, causing more carbon dioxide to enter the atmosphere.
Now imagine that everyone in Phil’s city (We’ll call it Philadelphia) lives exactly like Phil does. We’ll say that Philadelphia has 1 million people living in it. That means that, in a day, the city of Philadelphia uses about 3 million kWhs of energy. That’s a lot of carbon dioxide. But there’s an easy fix for that.
Phil decides that he’s going to turn off the lights of his rooms when he’s not there. He’s mostly in his bedroom, where his desk and computer live. Let’s say he spends his entire work day there, so about eight hours. He eats in his dining room for a total of two hours (Breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a midnight snack at nine because he’s a grown up now and no one can tell him that he can’t have a midnight snack at nine). He spends another two hours in the kitchen cooking, an hour in the bathroom (What he does there is none of your business) and two hours in his living room watching Stranger Things (because season 5 is coming up and it’s time to rewatch those episodes). Don’t worry, I’ll do the math for you (you’re welcome). Phil used 0.4 kWhs of energy. (On lights) 0.4! That’s over seven times less kWhs! Now imagine that the entirety of the imaginary city of Philadelphia lived like our pal Phil. They’d be using four hundred thousand kWhs of energy a day, or over two million less kWhs! That means that the local powerplant doesn’t need to burn as much fossil fuels, and that means less carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Way to go, Phil! The best part of it is, it only cost Phil a second of his time. So not only do you conserve energy, but get this, you also have a lot less money going into your light bill, thanks to the simple action of turning off a light. The planet will thank you, and your wallet will too.
