Today's Energy Insight

Thousands of Opportunities to Save Energy!

With over 12,000 students and more than 2,200 employees in our district, one flip of a switch does make a difference. If just ONCE per day, 25% of the district staff remembers to turn off lights in an unoccupied area, that's 550 times a day energy is being conserved. If 10% of the students remember just ONCE a day to turn off a computer monitor, that's 220 times a day monitors are being powered down. Now multiply those numbers by 5 and in one week alone, there are literally THOUSANDS of opportunities to save energy if just a fraction of the students and staff turn off a light or shut off a monitor.

All our small efforts do add up to make a big difference!

It’s a Great Day to Save Energy in Robbinsdale Area Schools!

Today's Energy Insight

The Greenest Cities
Across the Globe

• Copenhagen, Denmark has more people biking rather than driving so it is easy to see their focus is on reaching their carbon neutral goals.
• Curitiba, Brazil has eco-city initiatives started long ago with a goal making it literally the ‘greenest’ city in the world (city has a current total of 52 m² of green space).
• Oslo, Norway has a focus on renewable energy and is a leading city in electric car use with special incentives for eco-drivers.
• San Francisco, California has a strict recycling program including pay-as-you-throw on non-recyclable garbage. San Fransisco is the greenest city in the US and has a goal of zero-waste by 2020.
• Stockholm, Sweden has been aiming to reduce car use by offering green transportation alternatives. A congestion tax started in 2007 is raising money towards improving the environment.
• Singapore City, Singapore has building requirements that ensures all buildings are green throughout.
• Vancouver, Canada launched the Greenest City Action Plan in 2011, focusing on reducing emissions and waste, while increasing a green economy. Their goal is to be a completely renewable city by 2050.
• Vienna, Austria knows how to use water efficiently. They use water to generate electricity. Wastewater from the city is treated and purified before being released back to nature.

Today's Energy Insight

Did you know there are ways to do recycling wrong? Non-recyclable materials can force recycling plants to more or less shut down their operations while they fish the garbage out of their machinery. Here are five materials often mis-recycled. Watch out for them!

Pizza boxes ~ the grease absorbed by cardboard boxes affects the process of making cardboard into
new materials.

Saran wrap ~ plastic wrap can jam machinery used to recycle the more rigid plastic containers.

Batteries ~ household batteries today can be thrown in the trash because they do not have as much mercury as batteries manufactured before 1997 when the mandates to phase out mercury were passed.

Shredded paper ~ is too small to sort, the pieces literally fall through the cracks of the sorting machines and end up all over the floor of the facility, or worse, in with the glass.

Plastic lids ~ while an increasing number of plastics are now recyclable (you should still check the number on the bottom against your local program rules) most plastic caps are NOT recyclable and are a significant contaminant.

Month by Month

A recent article in the St. Paul Pioneer Press (originally published in the Washington Post) has a great break down of what to do month by month to keep your home running efficiently. For the month of February it recommends you clean the baseboards and vents throughout the house. It also calls for cleaning the light fixtures in the living room and dining room.

The article is entitled "How to Keep Your House Running Smoothly Month by Month." To read the entire post and see what is recommended for the other 11 months of the year, CLICK HERE.

Today's Energy Insight

Which of the following uses the most electricity in your home?

• refrigerator
• heating and cooling system
• water heater
• video game console

Scroll down to check your answer...

Furnaces and air conditioners account for approximately 40% of your home's utility use, followed by water heaters with 11-15% and refrigerators with 7-10%. Video game consoles use  the smallest percentage of the items listed however they are considered energy vampires, using as much as 16 billion kilowatt-hours nationwide every year.