Sunday, March 27, 2011

Weekly Earth Hour?

Last night's observance of Earth Hour got me thinking.  How much money could we save if we made this a weekly thing?  It could be another kind of family fun night even.  I know growing up, I was especially fond of power outages, since it meant that everyone sat around and read, told stories, or played board games.  So why not do this intentionally?  I'm sure it would save something on the electric bill too, although I don't know how much.  I know I was amazed at how much we saved last month by my leaving the heavy door open during sunny days, even with near or below freezing temperatures outside, since the sunlight coming in through the storm door would act as a solar collector and heats up the whole house, sometimes as much as 10 degrees.  In February!  It saved $30 of our gas bill last month!

I'm pretty sure having a weekly Earth Hour wouldn't make that much of an impact on our electric bill, but what about a daily one?  What about just making a more conscious effort to go to bed earlier and get up closer to dawn so we have lots more "Earth Hours" while we are sleeping?  What about turning the television off and spending time with the family every night?

I don't know how I'm going to implement some of these ideas in my family, or even if I'll be able to since I'm pretty sure to meet some heavy resistance by my husband and kids over the TV watching thing, but I'm going to be reading Better Off: Flipping the Switch on Technology with the folks over at Crunchy Chicken, so it will be interesting to see what sort of effects it has on me with this seed of thought already planted in my head.

4 comments:

  1. great points. I didn't know Earth Hour was upon us until I saw the images all over the world on CNN this morning. We usually participate but it always seemed to be quite warm out? We light candles and play cards it's always a ton of fun! We definitely shut the house down a lot earlier than we did say a year ago for bed and we've much more aware of what's on, plugged in etc.

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  2. Earth Hour is observed every year on the last Saturday of March, but this year, you are right, it was exceptionally cold. From people I've talked to, it put a damper on a number of families' Earth Hour traditions, since, for a lot of people, it is frequently spent outside and that wasn't an option this year!

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  3. Indeed! If we could do this on a weekly basis, we could save energy and money. In fact, many of the things we do to live green also save money. It seems like it would be a great incentive. Great post!

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  4. Sage, if you look at the archives, you'll see a lot of things that could be just as at home on a blog about living green as one about thrifty living. The two are definitely not mutually exclusive! I definitely make an effort to be more green, since, as a mom, I want to leave this planet in decent shape for my kids and their kids.

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