Sustainability Quick Wins: Part 1 – Have A Light Bulb Moment

There’s a lot that can be done for any business looking to make positive changes for the sake of sustainability. Some big and impressive, but most are small and easy to achieve. It might sound twee and perhaps a little like a fastidious parent checking regularly on the thermostat to make certain the kids haven’t turned the heating up while no one’s looking, but one of the simplest ways to reduce carbon emissions is turning off appliances you aren’t using.

For most of us in our home lives, it’s been drummed in to switch off a light when you leave a room, to turn off the coffee machine when you aren’t using it, and to make sure you close the fridge door behind yourself, but for some reason we’re all a bit less strict about these things in the workplace. I can’t say with any certainty, but for my part the assumption is that it’s a shared space, and we know someone will be along shortly wanting to use the coffee machine, so we may as well leave it on. Perhaps we’re simply in a rush, having a busy day, and such things easily fly out of our heads!

That makes a certain amount of sense, but did you know that an average 40-watt lightbulb uses approximately 0.04 kWh for every hour it’s left on. Let’s say you leave a light on for eight hours through the workday; that’s immediately 0.32 kWh per day, 1.6 kWh per week, 6.4 kWh per month, and 76.8 kWh per year. Studies have shown that the estimated emission rate is approximately 0.69 kilograms of carbon dioxide per kWh. That’s a whopping 52.99kg of carbon dioxide for the year, and that’s just one lightbulb. To put that into perspective, that’s the equivalent of making 847 cups of tea!

If you take a look around your workplace, I bet you’ll find there’s more than one light on in a room that isn’t used all that regularly. Toilets, kitchen, meeting rooms, and likely more besides, could all have the lights turned off when empty. It’s also worth noting that there’s some very interesting research being done that suggests offices that use more natural light have a general productivity boost of around of around 16% compared to those working under artificial lighting.

A slightly bigger, but no less common culprit, is the computer. It’s easy to leave a PC or laptop on standby at the end of the day, switch off the screen or close the lid and rush out to beat the traffic. We’ve all done it! But, making sure to turn off your computer properly at the end of the day could save your business around £20 per year, per device. Here at The Nest, for example, we have around twenty-five computers running at any one time, so making sure to switch them off at the end of the day would save us around £500 a year.

All in all, there’s no downside to being the fastidious parent of the office, checking the thermostat, switching off lights, and making sure computers and appliances are turned off properly when not being used. Still, if everyone pitches in, these small changes can save both money and the planet!

Links:

10 Ways To Save Money On Gas & Electricity Energy Bills – Which?

How much does it really cost you to leave your tech on standby? – Which? News

Switching off your lights has a bigger impact than you might think, says new study | ScienceDaily

The #1 Office Perk? Natural Light (hbr.org)

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