Don’t Overlook The Obvious When Saving Energy.
One of the areas that seems the least understood when using green products is the “carbon footprint”. To illustrate this point about green products, a simple story about the use of CFL (Compact Florescent Lamp) bulbs may help. When in a restaurant the other day, I noticed that the spoon was missing from the place setting. I looked around and it appeared it was the same all over the restaurant.
Well, we asked our server what was going on. She told us that “corporate” had put a new rule in place at all the restaurants instead of investing in green products. The rule was that no spoons were to be placed on any place setting. I grew up in an environment where a full place setting was always set before a hungry customer, consisting of a fork, knife and spoon. Now, “corporate” in its wisdom has said that only if a customer ordered coffee was a spoon to be given to the customer. I have a six year-old that uses a spoon for her fruit bowl; we had to ask for a spoon.
After inquiring why this had occurred, I was informed that “corporate” believed that there would be an energy savings and yet not a single CFL bulb was in use. I asked how that was possible; I was told that if an unused spoon was rewashed it was costing the company money and energy. So to prevent this energy loss it was better to not put the spoon on the table. The customer would just have to wait as their coffee or hot cereal got cold or until the overworked and over utilized server was done handling the other customers who needed spoons (more likely food).
I find it hard to believe that the amount of money saved would be significant as opposed to using CFL bulbs to save money. I seem to remember, just after high school, I worked in fast-paced restaurant chain. Everyday practice was to wash the plates, pot, pans and miscellaneous items in one or two baskets, followed by the glassware, and then wash the silverware in the last basket. So, where would the energy savings be if dishes are washed this way?
While pondering this, I happened to look up. Having written a few articles on energy savings, I noticed that they were still using incandescent bulbs. From where I sat I could count more than fifty bulbs burning energy as I waited for my order, and no green products like CFL bulbs in sight. Everywhere I looked and in every room that a customer had access, there were no green products in use. If they were trying to save money, you would think some green products like energy saving CFL bulbs would be used.
It looked like each incandescent light bulb was running around 75 watts. I inquired as to the hours of this store and was told they were open 138 hours a week.
So I did a little comparison; incandescent vs. green products like CFL bulbs. Using a little math: 50 incandescent bulbs * 75 watts = 3750 watts per hour. To figure the total watts per week for the store, take the watts per hour 3750 watts * 138 hours the store is open per week = 517,500 watt hours per week. The grand total for one year would be 517,500 * 52 weeks = 26,910,000 or 26 megawatts for this store alone so I wondered what the saving would be using green products like CFL bulbs.
Being of a curious nature, I looked up the restaurant on the Internet and found 88 stores in the chain. So if I multiply the 27 megawatts by the 88 stores, I get around 2,368 megawatt hours per year.
Now, what if we replaced all the incandescent bulbs with CFL bulbs? Well, a replacement for a 75 watts bulb runs 18 watts. So 50 bulbs times 18 watts would equal 900 per hour. Then we multiple 900 watts times 138 store hours and we get 124,200 watt hours per week. Then multiply 124,200 * 52 week we would get or 6.46 megawatt hours per year. Now, take the megawatt hours per year (6.46) times the number of stores (88) and we get around 568 megawatt hours per year for the whole chain using green products. If we do a little subtraction, we would get around 2,368 minus 568 = 1800 megawatt hours savings. I would say that they would be saving more than pennies if they were using green products like CFL bulbs.
Michael Edwards has more interesting article on going green, checkout his green energy