How can something as insignificant as turning the light off really change anything? As the Green Cup is upon us, we’re all feverishly turning off lights left and right. That is, after all, what everyone keeps telling us to do to save energy. For the four weeks of the Green Cup, we’re just following directions, motivated by the prospect of a President’s Day in the spring.
But we all go through periods of doubt when we question whether turning off a light or unplugging a charger really saves that much energy. How much of a difference can leaving on a 60 watt light bulb actually make?
This way of thinking dampens many kinds of collective efforts. For example, our voting system is based on the principle that all citizens have an equal say in how our government is run. This system would collapse if everyone stayed home on election day, thinking, “I’m only one person; what difference can my one vote possibly make?”
As Barack Obama likes to point out, there is strength in numbers. We can become powerful if every one of us stands up for what we believe in. Seemingly insignificant votes, or lights turned off, can have a huge impact when part of a collective.
Americans waste incredible amounts of energy compared to people in the rest of the world. If everyone lived as wastefully as Americans do, we would need five earths to support our extravagant habits. Sure, the electricity wasted when one person leaves a light on for an extra couple of hours isn’t that significant. But imagine 300 million people, the size of the American population, leaving lights on, chargers plugged in, TVs and computers blaring: the electricity consumption would be huge. If we multiply our individually wasteful actions, like not turning off that light, by 300 million, their negative impact is enormous.
But then multiply how much energy is saved in turning that light off by 300 million. While the amount of energy one person saves by turning off a light is small, the energy saved if everyone in a school, state or country followed suit is enormous. If everyone at Choate, everyone in Connecticut, or everyone in the U.S. took little steps to conserve, we would be wasting a lot less energy.
Although the Green Cup only factors in Choate’s electricity consumption, we can become less wasteful in many other aspects of our daily lives. We’ve all been hearing that vague word “sustainable” recently; what the movement strives for is developing ways of living that avoid depletion of natural resources, lifestyles that can be upheld and maintained far into the future. Achieving this goal begins with awareness: the realizatio that we can’t act as if we’re the only people on the planet.
We can make Choate more sustainable in many ways that don’t directly relate to the reading on the electricity meters. And these steps are simple actions everyone can take. They do not imply a drastic lifestyle change, only a little more thought. We can use one napkin, instead of ten, to wrap a cookie in. We can put the energy bar and English book from the school store in a bookbag instead of wasting a plastic bag. We can bring a mug to the Daily Grind (and get free coffee!) or a reusable water bottle to sports instead of wasting paper or plastic cups. The list of simple actions we can take is almost endless, but if each of us does our part, we can truly make a difference. Each year in America, 100 billion plastic shopping bags (equivalent to 12 million barrels of oil) are wasted because most shoppers don’t think they can make a difference by bringing their own bags. Obviously they can. Choate students attend one of the most difficult high schools in the country, and handling these small steps shouldn’t be so problematic.
Clearly, achieving sustainability is a collaborative effort. We all have to work together and educate each other to achieve tangible results. But, as we’ve seen in the results of the first few weeks of the Green Cup, we’re already on that path. We’ve got to think about the global consequences of our actions, and not just winning an extra day off, as awesome as that would be. Everything we do adds up, so whether we will worsen an already existing energy crisis or pioneer the sustainability movement is up to us.
So next time you’re going to dinner and walk out of your room, leaving your lights on, music playing and heat cranked up high, or are about to take a plastic shopping bag, think about the consequences of 300 million Americans doing that. As teenagers, we like to think of ourselves as bold and modern, but unless we take the initiative to make our lives more sustainable, we’re stuck in the past. Let’s truly be the future-minded, younger generation we think we are by implementing simple steps toward sustainability in our lives, during the Green Cup and beyond.
Using hand towels instead of paper towels to dry hands in dorms is one little way to conserve. PHOTO/Greg Stasiw ’11
