4 – Turn off lights at work

Reality check

Fluorescent lights do take some time to ‘warm up’. Turning them on and off can shorten their life, but so can leaving them on. Taking all these things into account, it is more cost effective to turn off a fluorescent light than to leave it on if it will stay off for more than ten minutes.

Benefits

Costs

Save energy
Save money
Changes others

Hundreds or thousands of dollars for the audit.
This is offset by the long term savings.

Downside

You’ll have to champion this cause on top of your existing workload
for the short-term.
The worst offenders are the hardest to change.
Some companies have no interest in reducing
their environmental impact. Full stop.