Earth Hour action plan for Individuals

Earth Hour is a people’s movement and requires the participation and support of individuals to successfully reach and engage a broad audience. Last year alone, 6 million Indians switched off for earth hour across 128 cities. 600,000 students from various institutions and cities volunteered to spread the message. This year too, your participation will continue to show the world that collectively, we care about this issue and stand united in seeking to find solutions to the escalating climate crisis—because the costs of inaction are far too great to ignore.

Participation in Earth hour is easy!

Switch Off on 26 March 2012

1. Show your support by joining us on facebook and switching off at 8:30 PM on 26 March 2012.
2. Promote Earth Hour to friends and family through letters, e-mails, viral videos, blogs and social media platforms to encourage them to join the Earth Hour movement on facebook and switch off their lights during Earth Hour 2012.
3. Students can contribute by promoting Earth Hour within campus and to faculties through letters, e-mails, student publications, newsletters, and campus website to encourage them to join the Earth Hour movement.Use your personal networks to broadcast your participation in Earth Hour and encourage others to get involved. You can also write articles for your school and college magazines, newspapers to maximize outreach.
4. Plan an on-ground event to celebrate Earth Hour: A block party, candlelight dinner, a residents' get-together are just some of the ways you can get your friends and neighbours together to celebrate Earth Hour. Broadcast the details of your event with Facebook's "Create an Event" application. Keeping it an open event will allow invitees and participants to extend the invitation to their social networks as well.

 Go beyond the hour

Our carbon footprint is a sum total of all the CO2 emissions produced as a result of our activities in a given period of time.  India’s per capita footprint is low by comparative standards at around 1.12 metric tonnes, but that is partly due to large disparities in our society and will grow if we do not take action.  

After this earth hour, why not make some simple changes to your day-to-day activities and shift towards a sustainable low carbon lifestyle.  You don’t have to look far for solutions. Simple steps at an individual level go a long way in reducing the impact on the environment and increasing energy efficiency – which includes maintaining the same quality of output of appliances and activity, but with less energy used.  Also, don’t forget, quite often a lower carbon lifestyle can lead to a lower cost lifestyle too.

As a starting point, why not try and calculate your personalcarbon footprint, this will give you the ability to track what sort of impact the changes you make to your lifestyle is having.

Save Energy and Costs:

Some simple changes in habit can reap large rewards in energy savings and emissions reductions:

• Turn appliances off at the wall:  Many appliances are built with standby options – why not turn off each of these items at the wall when not in use.  Up to 10% of energy used in your home can be wasted on appliances that are ‘switched off’, but are using power because they are on standby mode. 
• Turn off lights and fans when you are not in the room: Even if it is for a short period of time make a habit of turning off the fans and lights when you leave a room.  Remember, fans don’t actually cool the air – they just cool you.  
• Change to more energy efficient lighting: Many households have made the shift to Compact Fluorescent lights, which are 4 times more efficient than old style bulbs and can last up to ten times longer.  Although the upfront cost of a CFL can be higher than an incandescent bulb, the difference is paid back over time and will eventually save you money.  Another growing option is the use of Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs), however, these are at a much earlier stage and costs can be prohibitive for households.   
• Reduce the temperature setting on the geyser: Geysers come with a factory setting of 60 degrees but we only really need water at 40 degrees for a comfortable bath. Change temperature settings and reduce annual CO2 emissions by 172 kg per geyser.
• Manage Air Conditioning in summer:  If you are using air conditioning at home make it a regular temperature rather than over cooling your house.  The general running of an air conditioner is about the equivalent of running 25 ceiling fans for around the same time! Set AC thermostat settings properly: An airconditioner uses 3  to 5 percent less energy for each degree set above 22°C, therefore set AC’s at a temperature as high as is comfortably possible (25 - 26°C) in the summer. (www.bee.nic.in)
• Ensure proper temperature control in washing machines:  Most washing machines (and machine powders) work very well with cold water and it is about 4 times more efficient to run when compared to a hot water wash.  Try it out!

By making conscious and informed purchasing decisions you can reduce costs over the period you own equipment and lower your emissions too.  A preliminary study by Prayas Energy Group in Pune, found that up to 57000 Million Units of Energy, and 50Mt CO2 could be saved by 2013 if there was a shift for key household appliances to be the highest level of energy efficiency.  The avoided energy generation would be about 20, 000MW, or equivalent of building a large new power station each year for five years!        

Use Energy Star rated appliances when possible:  The Bureau of Energy Efficiency has worked with appliance manufacturers to label certain appliances with energy efficiency stars.  Although higher energy star rated products are slightly more expensive than standard products, the difference in price is often paid back in a short amount of time, from which point on you will be making a saving.  The chart below illustrates the star rating, with a fridge as an example.

Table 1: Energy and Cost Saving for 250 liters Frost Free Refrigerator with different Star Ratings

Install a solar hot water heater:  Most geysers are run on electricity, but solar hot water systems are becoming more and more prevalent.  If you are renovating, or building a new house, why not consider including a solar hot water system?  You can reduce emissions by 687kg on every installation.

Transport:

Driving

• The numbers of cars on Indian roads is growing at a very fast pace with a record 184,332 cars sold in India in January 2012.  As the number of cars rises and pollution rises accordingly, there are a number of steps to ensure cars are used more efficiently:
• Car Maintenance:  A well maintained car will save you fuel, as well as reduce pollution.  It pays to get a basic service done every six months and a more complete service once a year.  Always try to make sure your tyres are correctly inflated.  Flat tyres lead to greater fuel use and can be unsafe.
• Speed: The speed at which you drive will greatly alter the amount of fuel consumed.  When coming up to traffic lights, anticipate them early and slow your vehicle, rather than heavy braking.  When driving at lower speeds it is generally more efficient to roll down your window.  At higher speeds it is more efficient to use air conditioning due to increased drag.
• Car Pooling: The roads are choked with cars with one person in them.  Ask around at your office if there are people that live close by and organise an informal carpool.  Ease congestion, lower costs and lower emissions.  Whenever possible, group together journeys, rather than running a number of small errands.

Public Transport  

• Efforts are being made to upgrade public transport infrastructure and quality of buses.  Be an early adopter and help force a change in perceptions towards the use of public transport and reduce your own emissions in the process.  The more public transport is used by all, the more relevant authorities will be forced to take action to increase capacity. 

Cycling and Walking

• Where possible, try to walk or cycle which will give you exercise and get you out of your car.  Currently walking and cycling are considered hazardous activities, but this is also an area where a change in behaviour is required and change will only be effected when large numbers of people start to force a change in attitude from drivers.

Water Usage:

• Nobody needs telling that water is a scarce resource, however you will be surprised at the amount of wastage that can occur from leaks and overflowing overhead storage tanks. 
• A leaky tap dripping at the rate of about one drop per second can waste about25 litres per day!  A substantial amount of energy is used to process and pump water to our homes – wastage can be easily avoided.

In your home you can:

• Check for leaky taps and toilets.  Take action immediately to have these fixed.
• Use the leftover water from washing vegetables to water pot plants
• Ensure your toilets have dual flushing options
• Turn off the tap when brushing teeth, and install smaller/more efficient shower heads to reduce wastage.  Also try to take shorter showers and educate children on the need to be quicker – perhaps even look to install a timer.  A five-minute shower with a standard showerhead uses 100 L of water whereas a low-flow showerhead uses just 35 L of water
• Make sure the local Residents Welfare Association is made aware of faulty water pipes

Waste:

Greater consumption levels and increased packaging of goods is leading to mountains of waste.  The first step to reducing waste is to have a think about what waste really is.  This will help you with the popular actions of Reduce – Reuse – Recycle.

• Reduce – try to reduce the amount of packaging by refusing individual plastic bags for vegetables, and buying in bulk when possible.  Also keep organic waste separate from non-organic and try to find alternative uses eg. composting.  There is a lot of organic waste that ends up in landfills (it is estimated that the waste split in Indian Households is 60% organic, 20% recyclable and 20% inert in nature) – this waste rots and produces a lot of CO2 emissions.
• Reuse – Plastics are a hassle, but the impact can be reduced if pastic containers are used more than once, extending the lifetime and usefulness of the product.  When you have finished with products such as computers and TVs find out if there are organisations that would be happy to take older model appliances.
• Recycle – Although informal systems operate, try to avoid landfill excess by recycling what you can.