Each year for the last five years running on the day of Earth Hour Global, I went around my former station at the appointed Turn Off time of 8:30 PM and counted how many lights were left on that could have been turned off, or had timers/sensors installed, then calculated the cost to the station of leaving the lights on for an entire year, of which many of them were. Might as well, right? As when Americans leave a room they assume that A) someone else will eventually come into the room to use it, or B) it’s too much trouble/effort. Besides, it’s not wasting *that* much electricity… right?
Yearly cost to the station – given change in cost of electricity and number of lights left burning – varied from year to year, but it annually was in the thousands (or tens of thousands) of dollars that could have been saved. The big shock – and disappointment personally – was the non-interest. Sending the information to management via email each year, there was never an inquiry of “How did you get this information?” “What motivated you to find it out?” and, most important, “How do we stop wasting our company’s money/resources?”
On this #EarthDay2020, and next year’s #EarthHour, #unless we choose to do better, it’s not going to get better.
Meteorologist Austen Onek 