Saving electricity during the holidays

November 18, 2008 By Leave a Comment

It is not hard to feel that Christmas is near when you are in the Philippines. Everywhere, you see these christmas decorations that Filipinos call “parol”. It is a star-shaped colorful Christmas lantern made of cellophane paper, japanese paper, and a local material called capiz. Most of them come with colorful moving lights. They’re really beautiful. I think the parol is unique in the Philippines.

I passed by a store of parol last night. It has a display of I think more than 100 parol all of them with their beautiful lights on. I wonder how much energy is consumed with that store in one night. It’s beautiful to see our street filled with the spirit of Christmas but it made me thought if we can still do that and saving on our electricity at the same time.

Along the Ayala Avenue, the main street of our place here in Makati, you’ll see a beautiful display of Christmas lights running through the plants at the center of the road. At night, the lights are a beautiful sight to hold. Even if traffic sucks, you won’t get pissed off because of the sight. It’s beautiful and I don’t have anything about beautiful things and things that are associated with Christmas but I’m just wondering if we can ever have a beautiful and energy-efficient Christmas decorations and Christmas lights?

I know that Christmas lights that are made of LED (Light Emitting Diodes) are more energy efficient than the regular incandescent Christmas lights. But can we find LED Christmas lights here in the Philippines? Is there any shop here that sells LED Christmas lights?

We don’t have any Christmas decorations in our place but if you have a parol and Christmas lights in your house, maybe one energy saving tip is to turn it off before you go to sleep. It doesn’t just save energy, it’s also safe for the whole household. I heard a lot of incidents here in Manila where the house was burned because of defective Christmas lights left turned on the whole night. I think if all houses that have Christmas lights and parol in their houses turn them off at 12am, we’ll save a lot of electricity already.

This may also be the right time to change all our incandescent bulbs if you still have one in your house. Incandescent bulbs require a lot of electricity. Besides, they make our rooms hotter. This holiday season is our time to give gifts to our godchildren and nephews and nieces. We can make this holiday extra special by giving a gift to our planet: buying fluorescent lights.

These are only two things and they’re really simple but they can make a lot of difference. We’ll be saving on our electricity. The electricity we use up means less energy usage which means the less natural resources consumed which means less woe for the planet earth.

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Greening the Philippine Christmas

November 14, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Christmas in the Philippines start really early. Can you imagine hearing Christmas songs playing in the malls in September? Yep! When the “ber” months arrive here, it means it is the start of Christmas. The malls have their reason to do this: to encourage people to buy, buy, buy!

It’s difficult to believe that Philippines is a poor country is you go to the malls during a 3-day-weekend sale especially these days. The malls are cramped with people: families, group of friends, employees out from offices. . .you’ll see them with bags of groceries, clothes, food, and gifts.

Because we buy a lot during Christmas, it is the time of the year that is the least environmentally-friendly. Why? Because, the more we buy, the more we’re using earth’s resources.

The more food we buy, the more plastic bags we use, the more waste will go to our dump sites, the more cans, bottles and plastic containers will be used. . .

The more clothes we buy, the more energy is needed to manufacture more of them, the more water is needed to wash them,the more electricity is used to iron them out.

The more gifts that we buy, the more paper is needed for the gift wrappers, more gifts will have to be manufactured to replace our gifts for next year, the more waste we’ll have for broken toys and electronic gadgets

How can we make our Philippine Christmas green? Reduce our buying. Instead of buying, why not just give our time and energy to our family and friends? Will Christmas not be as meaningful if we don’t have 5 pairs of new pants?

If we reduce our consumption of manufactured goods and use more eco-friendly alternatives, we will be helping a lot already and we are already prolonging the stay of our species here on earth.

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Shutting down and Saving up

November 3, 2008 By Leave a Comment

I read somewhere that shutting down the computer can save more energy than leaving the computer on stand by mode or putting it in hibernate. I wonder how that is because I always thought that the main reason for the computer’s hibernation and stand by mode is basically to save on energy.

I tried to see if it will really make a difference if I turn off my computer. I don’t have the habit of turning off my computer during breaks because I find it a little bit time-consuming booting up the computer. Yeah, I realize I can be impatient. But, since I discovered the energy-saving tip, I have been turning off my computer during break time even if it will only be an hour that I’ll be away.

There are 5 of us in the office and we started a little experiment just to see if shutting down the computer can make a difference in the electricity bill. While there is not a big drop in the electricity bill, I can say there’s a slight difference. Out electricity bill lowered by more or less 5% of our regular consumption.

But think if all computers in all offices in Manila shut down all the computers during lunch time. With one office, the difference may be very minimal but think if all offices in Manila lower their energy consumption by 5% by just shutting down the computers, I think it can be a pretty big energy savings for the whole country.

I wonder how much money is saved with just a few clicks of the mouse? Well, I can’t find any info on the internet. The only thing I found is this article that says that every year, $217 million is wasted in UK because of PCs that were not shut down or were in hibernation mode over night. The whole night is longer than an hour of break but I can tell shutting down all computers in all the offices in Manila can also save millions of dollars for the country.

I should really start a drive or something encouraging the shut down of the computers during lunch breaks . . just a thought. . .

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