By Amy Fraser
Business School Green Impact team member

Unplug, turn-off, save energy

For one hour every Monday from 4pm until 5pm, we are asking you to unplug and turn off any non-essential electronic devices and lights in order to reduce our energy consumption in the Business School.

We will monitor and calculate how much energy something as simple as unplugging your phone charger for an hour can save. This is part of our School campaign to save energy and be more sustainable.

Although it may not be obvious, there is a direct connection between your energy usage and the environment. To generate electricity, most power plants burn coal, crude oil or other fossil fuels. This releases greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, into our atmosphere which has detrimental impacts on our land and our lives.

Cutting energy use is easy

Cutting back on energy consumption reduces the amount of electricity that power stations have to make, subsequently reducing the amount of fossil fuels that are burned each day. Even a small change can make a big difference.

Changing your daily habits doesn’t cost any money and can be an easy way to cut energy usage. Think of steps you take every day and try to be conscious of how you use energy. It can be as simple as turning the lights off when you leave a room or unplugging your phone when it has enough charge.

Five top tips to save energy

Here are a few simple tips to help you save energy, both in School and at home:

1. Turn off your computer, and computer screen, when not in use. A single computer and monitor left on 24 hours a day will cost around £45 a year. Multiply that by the number of computers in our building to understand what this might be costing us – and our planet.
   
   The IT department have advised that computers can be turned off overnight but this can lead to problems with start-up and/or a worse experience using the PC so they do not advise this. If you do not want to turn off your computer you can still save energy by turning off the screen and putting it on standby.
   
2. Switch off lights when the room is not in use. Office lights left on overnight use enough energy in a year to heat a home for five months.
   
3. Switch off your chargers, even when they are not in use. If you leave your charger left plugged in, even when they are not connected to a device, they will continue to use a small amount of energy. Unplugging the charger when not in use could make a big environmental impact if everyone does it.
   
4. Filling the kettle up with only as much water as you need could save around £7 in energy bills a year and around £46 million for the UK.
   
5. Think of any other electric items you may use in your office: fans, laptops, tablets, heaters. Turn them off when not in use. All those little red lights and screensavers humming away in the background cumulatively use a lot of energy. You can save around £30 a year just by remembering to turn your appliances off standby mode.

If we change our habits for at least one hour every Monday, we can make a real difference to the amount of energy the Business School uses.

Earth Hour 2020

Why not switch off your lights for Earth Hour 2020 on Saturday 28 March 2020 too?

Between 8:30pm and 9:30pm, Earth Hour asks people around the world to switch off their lights to call attention to climate change.

Earth Hour aims to spark global conversations on protecting nature not only to combat the climate crisis, but to ensure our own health, happiness, prosperity and even survival.

Further reading

• 10 easy ways to reduce your energy bills
• Will a phone still ‘charge’ even when it is full?
• Energy Saving Trust: Save energy at home