Who Turned Off The Lights?

This Saturday night the hotel is taking part in Earth Hour – the global warming initiative whereby you turn off your lights for one hour. If Australia’s commercial sector turned off lights when buildings weren’t in use and combined this with other cost effective technology there would be a reduction in lighting emissions by 70% or 2 – 4 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions. That’s an amazing amount when you think about it. If all Australian households simply turned off unused lighting and appliances on standby it would reduce emissions by at least 5 million tonnes per annum. Now I just find that frightening. The amount of wastage by using standby instead of switching them off at the wall is shocking. So more importantly, let’s not wait for one hour of the year to do this, let’s make an effort to do this every day, I think it should be a daily habit, not an annual celebration.