Cleaner air and lower your bills by switching off more often
Posted on March 26th, 2018
If you missed Earth Hour on Saturday night it’s not too late – every hour is an opportunity for cleaner air and lowering your electricity bills.
And it’s not hard to do! You can breathe easier over creature comforts this year by switching off more often.
For many of us breathing easy means turning up the air-con, putting our feet up and cracking a cold one. But there are costs to our creature comforts that hit more than just our bank balance – they impact the air we breathe, our local economy and even play a role in global weather patterns. No way you say? Read on…
Everything we purchase and consume is sourced from the environment – from the food we consume to the materials we use to manufacture cars, clothes and medical equipment. Extracting raw materials, growing food, manufacturing goods and transporting everything consumes a lot of fuel and electricity. Even producing fuel and electricity consumes fuel and electricity, and the energy consumption doesn’t stop there. Cooking, cleaning, storing food and using appliances requires a power source. Accidently leaving the TV on standby, the door open with the air-con on, or having an energy-inefficient fridge means you use more… and pay more every billing cycle.
There’s also another hidden downside – some of the by-products created when we use fuel and electricity end up in the air we breathe every day. These impact our health and cumulatively, influence how the air cools and heats which in turn influences weather patterns.
As a country, Australia is incredibly lucky to have one of the lowest density populations and one of the highest living standards in the world, which means our air is comparatively clean. But air moves around the planet so we all need to act to keep it clean.
Here are five steps for cleaner air and lower power bills that you can implement regularly – you don’t need to wait for Earth Hour each year!
