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Better Light at Less Cost

Recently Washington Ethical Society’s (WES) Earth Ethics Committee (EEC) and friends worked to increase light levels while also lowering WES’s electric usage and bills. We retrofitted existing fixtures and installed automatic switches. The local power company gave WES an incentive payment of $1,150 for these upgrades. 

Before the upgrade, these spaces had old technology of dim, inefficient, noisy, and unreliable lighting. New lamps, ballasts, and reflectors provide efficiency, quiet, reliability, good color, and low mercury as well increased light levels that meet classroom standards. 

This project improves WES’s environmental stewardship. Saving electricity is particularly important because most of the electricity in the mid-Atlantic area comes from coal, which is often mined using mountaintop removal—where whole mountains are destroyed and the detritus is pushed into stream valleys. Coal-burning produces acid rain and global-warming pollution. Further, coal ash is generally mixed with water and stored in impoundments that sometimes leak or burst with disastrous results. 

We thank everyone at WES who helped make this project possible. 


Rich Reis recently had a letter published in the Washington Post addressing the true price of carbon emissions. Read Rich's letter at  http://tinyurl.com/4xpxx8t