Monthly Tips: Electricity Usage

• Keep cool – in the summer, close your drapes during the day to save on cooling costs
• Keep warm – in the winter, open your drapes to let the sun in and save on heating costs
• Turn off the lights – when going to a meeting, lunch, or leaving for the day remember to turn off your office lights 
• Computer monitors – at the end of the day and at lunch remember to turn off your monitor
  • At 10 cents per kilowatt-hour, turning off one 25-watt flat monitor during down time only saves $1.38 per month, BUT eliminates 225 pounds of CO2 (green house emissions) by burning 135 fewer pounds of coal each year.

Monthly Tips: Ways to Reuse

• Buy bigger – try buying larger packages of food items instead of individual items like yogurt and water bottles
  • The U.S. throws away 10 billion yogurt containers a year!
• BYOM – Bring Your Own Mug – instead of using the plastic or recycled coffee and water cups, bring your own mug or cup to work 

Monthly Tips: Ways to Reduce

• Pay your bills online – Easy and saves you postage
  • If all the U.S. paid their bills online, it would eliminate more than 800,000 tons of waste each year
• Paper Please – When at the grocery store, remember to ask for paper bags… or better yet bring your own eco-friendly reusable canvas bags
  •  It takes the average plastic bag 500 years to disintegrate 
  •  It takes the average paper bag 6 months to disintegrate

Monthly Tips: Water Saving Tips

• Check your faucets – leaky faucets that drip once per second can waste more than 3 thousand gallons of water a year
  • Installing a faucet aerator will double your faucets efficiency
• Check your toilet – up to 20 percent of toilets leak, wasting up to 200 gallons of water a day!
  •  Installing new efficiency toilets will save you money on future water bills
• Always wash a full load – the average washing machine uses 40 gallons of water per load
• If we all used new efficient water fixtures we would:
  • save 100 million kilowatts of electricity a year (enough to power the entire Midwest)
  • prevent production of 80 thousand tons of green house gases
  • help lower the Midwest’s chance of having a drought due to above average temperatures caused by global warming

Monthly Tips: Holiday Ideas

• Use LED lights – LED lights produce 80 -90 percent less energy and last longer.
• Use a timer on your lights – for about ten dollars you can buy a timer for your outside lights
• Buy recycled wrapping paper or use shopping bags or scrap fabric to wrap your presents
• Reconsider buying fake Christmas trees – plastic trees are made of petroleum and therefore are not biodegradable
  • Real trees can later be turned into mulch
• Make your own Driedel – instead of buying a plastic or rubber Driedel, try making your own (www.care2.com)
• Use your own tableware instead of buying plastic
  • If you need to buy disposable tableware, please consider buying recycled paper plates and napkins. 

CFL Fact Sheet

Have questions about your Green Team gift? Here’s a quick reference for everything CFL. CFL Fact Sheet