What do you get when you retire and recycle a whole bunch of energy-gobbling holiday lights and plug in some seasonal LEDs instead? A very green holiday season!
A big thank you to everyone in the communities across Ontario who took part in the Green the Season holiday light exchanges. One Change and our partner the Ontario Power Authority declare the events a total success!
Thanks to all of you, this holiday season will be a lot more energy efficient! Here's a break- down:
- A total of 4,551 vouchers for energy efficient seasonal LED light strings were redeemed at participating Canadian Tire and Home Hardware stores.
- At two strings per voucher, that means a total of 9,102 strings of seasonal LEDs were purchased.
- Assuming each string would replace an inefficient incandescent string, the resulting energy savings for Ontario residents is an estimated maximum of 855,588 kilowatt hours per year.
- The total cost savings this translates could be as much as $94,115!
Tonnes-literally tonnes!-of inefficient lights were collected for recycling, too. So far, 5,877 kilograms of spent Christmas light strings have been sent from the event locations to a recycling facility. We chose Fluorescent Lamp Recyclers because they have the technology to ensure that every part of the light string is recycled.
The 72.19 kilometres of holiday light strands sent for recycling contain:
- 296 070 light bulbs
- 799.4 kg of glass
- 681 kg of metal
- 1464 kg of copper
- 2932.6 kg of plastic
Wow-all of this stuff has been diverted from landfill. If you'll forgive us the cliché, talk about the gift that keeps on giving.
Drawing contest winners!
Many thanks to all of the kids who participated in our drawing contest. There were many excellent pieces of art submitted to the contest, which made choosing winners a difficult task! Congratulations to Danielle from Baltimore, Ian from Cobourg, Haley from Bracebridge, Sydney from Stratford and Colleen from Marathon. Click on the thumbnails below to see their beautiful work, displayed in order from left to right as their names appear above:
Until next year, when we'll retire even more of those seasonal energy-gobblers, we wish all you season-greening elves a very good one!
See a slide show of highlights from our SLED weekend.
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