Green in action

Green stories in the real world.

Over the past year, Chuck has been diligently replacing his light bulbs with CFL's as they burn out. Just to set the scene, he does live in a 2,000 square foot 3 bed/2.5 baths two story house (a real adult house). It's definitely isn't as compact as my 12oo square feet 3 bd/1 bath (my little bungalow). He also installed a programmable thermostat last July. In January, Ameren reevaluated his budget building and his electric bill was cut down by more than 40%. Wow. That's impressive.

In SAL's green kick-off for 2008, the green team gave every person in the home office a reusable bag for groceries. We also give a bag to every new employee at the home office (sorry field people and retail locations, but you get short end on this one). As most of you know, there is a grocery store in my building. It's small but convenient. My guess is that a substantial number of the 500 employees take advantage of the mini-store, but I don't have any numbers on it. Since we had a year with the reusable bags, we pulled the numbers to see if plastic bag consumption has gone down in the last year in the mini-store. Well, the numbers came back 22,000 less. We ordered 22,000 less plastic bags. I am impressed and stunned. If this is the impact 500 people can make, what can a regular grocery store do?! It shows that one person can make a HUGE difference.

Next time, you hesitate and think, "Is it really going to make a difference this time?" YES.

Together, we can make a difference.