Trail to Earth Day #3: Stay Conservatively Plugged In While Working at Home

LED bulbs are just as bright as standard bulbs while using 80 to 90 percent less energy.

The Trail to Earth Day, a series of simple tips to help the environment (with music at the end!) will run through the 50th Earth Day, April 22. We’d be happy to send you one a day via text. Sign up here.

April 3, 2020 — With small changes to consume less power, we can be more energy efficient, environmentally friendly and save money.

Many of us are working and studying at home, which means our households are using more electricity (on the other hand, think of the gas we’re saving!). While we can’t completely‘unplug, this is the perfect time to become more conscious of simple things we can do every day to cut back on electricity consumption.

Eversource has some tips:

Monitor lighting use. Turn the lights off when you leave a room, take advantage of natural light, and use lamps over your desk instead of lighting the whole area. Use LED bulbs.  

Get smart power strips to shut down power to products that aren’t being used. Unplug chargers, TVs, computers and gaming consoles when you’re done. Set your computer and monitor to go into “sleep mode” when not in use.

In the kitchen, limit the times you open your oven and refrigerator doors. For cooking small amounts of food, use your microwave or toaster oven, or fire up the outdoor grill instead of turning on the oven or stove.

Lower your water heater temperature — it can reduce energy use by 4-22% each year.

Take advantage of this time at home to teach children about being energy conscious. The Energy Star website has great resources, games and activities to help kids learn about types of energy, where it comes from, and how saving energy helps the environment.

By challenging yourself and everyone in your household to start taking some of these simple steps now, they will soon become habits that continue in the future.

You can start by taking some of these simple steps …