Hoping for a Green New Year

This year I actually set a New Years Resolution. I don't usually set one, because it's just a set up to fail. I know, Great attitude. This year I am hoping to do more for the environment and teach the kids more about going green. My goals are to continued to change out all the bulbs in our house to CFL's and try to recycle, reuse and reduce more. So my first attempt went a little off course. I sat down with the kids (the little ones) and tried, over dinner, to discuss the concept and why we should turn off lights when we leave a room. I also tried to discussed not running water when it wasn't necessary. Well things kind of went off course when I mention the polar ice cap melting and the effect on the polar bears. Lauren wanted to know how Santa's castle was doing. OK. What the hell. I told her that Santa's castle was in danger of melting if we didn't remember to conserve energy. I know, cheap shot. But if it works. What the hey.

I would like to congratulate my big boss. You see my company owns 5 apartment complexes. This year the boss decided that all of the common area lighting was to be switched to CFL's. This is no small undertaking. Think about this. I have one of the smaller sites. I have 16 buildings. Each building has 5 porches. Each porch has a light fixture that holds 2 bulbs. We are going from 60 watt bulbs to 13 watts. This is a saving of 7,520 watts. The buildings also have flood lights. There are 144 flood lights going from 75 watts to 19 watts. That's a saving of 8,064 watts. I also changed out the office, shop, restrooms, etc. This was a savings of 720 watts. The grand total is 16,304 watts. Not only will the company see a big reduction in their energy bills, but think of the impact on the environment when you spread this over the other 5 complexes (which are much larger then mine). Please also remember that the initial outlay is going to hurt, because these bulbs are not as cheap, but they will last 3 times as long so we hope to end up with a large savings in time and cost in the end.