Has your electric bill been high this winter? Mine has. Did you know electricity is measured in kilowatt-hours, or 1000 watts of power sustained over one hour? To put it into perspective, that’s the equivalent of a 40 watt light bulb burning for 25 hours, or a person doing manual labor for eight hours (like shoveling snow).
Wouldn’t it be awesome if you could lower your bill? In Connecticut, the utilities charge is about 10¢ pre kWh.
How much money would you save if you shut off your electricity for Earth Hour on March 24 at 8:30pm? That depends on how much electricity you use. This past December our electric bill was over $500! If there are about 730 hours in a month, shutting off my house would save me less than a dollar. That’s not much, but that’s the beauty of the Ripple Effect. There are about 24,920 households in my town. If only half of the Awesome Moms here observed Earth Hour, that would be a savings of over $8700 in this town alone.
But wait! There’s more!
There are over 1,300,000 households in Connecticut. If only half of the Awesome Moms of CT shut off their electricity for Earth Hour, that would be a huge savings of electricity. Now, multiply that by 50 states, 29 of which have a bigger population than tiny Connecticut, and you can really see the impact.
On top of that, there is the Cool Factor that accompanies Earth Hour. Your kids will think you are Awesome if everyone shut their lights off at 8:30pm, so an entire time zone goes black. As the world turns, one time zone shuts down at 8:30, while the one next to it lights back up at 9:30. It works its way around the planet in a 24-hour cycle. It’s like the planet is doing a sports wave, but instead of us all standing up and sitting down physically, we are taking a metaphorical stand. And, how cool is it to be doing the same thing as millions of strangers around the globe?
How can you contribute? Alert people to the event, and encourage them to participate. Hold an Earth Hour Event. Plan for some fun activities for your kids. For some really cool ideas, check out https://www.earthhour.org/
