I hope your visit here makes you think about what you can do get businesses to make sure their lights are off during the day. In addition, we need to push to get the large office buildings in our cities to shut their lights off at night so that we do not end up paying for this through their products and services we all buy.
How I Got Started...
My crusade started about eight years ago when my job required me to drive large distances on a daily basis. At that time there were news reports stating that our provincial government (Ontario, Canada) was pouring 500 million dollars into an old power generating facility. It occurred to me that I (and everyone else for that matter) was paying for part of this cost. I drove by government buildings, gas stations, and parking lots, all with their lights left on during the daylight hours. I realized that something needed to be done, and why not I to start down that path?
Why I Got Started...
$500 million for an old power facility? How much could taxes be decreased if this facility didn't need to run? How much better would the environment fare is this facility didn't need to run? Wouldn't it feel good to do something for this planet and its environment?
Some History...
After I realized I needed to do something I came up with a simple plan. Inform the public and get the businesses to start turning off their lights during the day. I started with the gas stations that I drove by day after day. After approaching the managers of various gas stations with this issue I came to the conclusion no one was going to like me and what I was doing. They said that they have no control of the lights, and that I should call customer service. I did just that. I spoke with a customer service representative and had a complaint logged against the station and requested that the District manager call me back and let me know when they had dealt with this situation. The following day I received a phone call from the district manager and he explained to me that it was a faulty sensor (about $40 dollars). This particular station was fixed in about three days. Just think, if I had not mentioned this to the customer service representative the lights would have been on 24 hours a days 7 days a week for who knows how long.
After working on many local issues I decided to take on larger companies, such as local municipalities. Many of my local municipalities had been leaving the under pass lights on during the day (one in particular had 30 lights burning away on one underpass). The problem with this situation was that the municipality was not taking responsibility for the lights and said it was a Ministry of Transportation issue. After speaking with the Ministry of Transportation they told me that it was the Municipality's responsibility. I pushed the MTO and was able work with them to get a plan of attack put together. This resulted in two municipality's re-wiring and replacing sensors on every under pass that they were responsible for.
Goals of this site...
My goal is too educate, empower, and motivate people to take action on this issue. I can only do so much myself and I hope through this website I can get more people on board to help out with my mission.
How does this affect you?
You pay more in tax... The federal government gives money to the provincial government and they in turn put this money (in Canada's case 500 million dollars) into the extra power facilities that are required for this wasted power.
Our planet suffers... The effects of energy waste causes long term environmental damage that we cannot reverse.
I think I speak for all of us in saying that we want to leave our children a planet that they can live on.
All we need to do is look up and pay attention when we park our cars, pump gas, or just drive to and from work.
