Thursday, August 25, 2011

Quick tip: Switch off the lights.

I'll be the first to admit, I never understood the point of occasions such as Earth hour. For those of you who are not familiar with Earth Hour (now I'm second guessing myself and wondering if that's what it was really called): earth hour was an hour once a year when everyone around the world turned off their lights for a full 60 minutes. This usually coincided with Earth Day on April 23d, which is meant to remind us about environment issues.

As you may have guessed, today's quick tip is about conserving energy in the form of lighting. (I'll keep it simple and keep heating out of this until the fall and winter months are upon us.)
Quick tip: Only turn on the lights you need, and only keep them on for however long you need them.




Remember how much fun you would have as a kid during power outages? (I was scared of the dark for a long time but power outages were always fun!) How about spending time at a cottage without electricity and lighting candles once the sun went down?
Here's a short list of things that are fun to do by candlelight or in the dark:
- Playing board games or cards
- Eating dinner
- Having friends over for wine!
- Sleeping
- Romance
- Listening to music

Last words: I recently found out that beeswax candles are the best option. This is because they contain "no paraffin, benzene, acrolyn, lead, stearic acid, or any other chemicals. As a result no toxic petrochemical by-products are released during the burning of beeswax candles." Source. For this reason, I'm burning whatever candles I have now and will make the switch once I burn through my current toxic candles.

2 comments:

  1. though you must be careful with candles too, they aren't always environmentally friendly

    http://www.natural-environment.com/blog/2008/03/26/environmental-impact-of-candles-during-earth-hour/

    You can make your own beeswax, I was always lead to believe is the easiest (made some when I was young and they smelled great!)

    http://candles.lovetoknow.com/How_to_Make_Beeswax_Candles

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  2. This is a great reminder! I think a lot of the time, people use candles as accessories and forget that they can be a valuable source of light. Just remembering to turn things off when you're not using them can save a lot of energy. Likewise, although they contain plastic, LED lights are bright and save power, too. :)

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