GOPB Part 4 - Lights Out

I pledge to turn off my lights whenever I leave my office for extended periods (15 minutes or longer) and ask my employees to do the same.

This one doesn’t seem to need much in the way of exposition. I mean, generally it is common sense, right? I know as a kid this was a constantly repeated mantra. “When you leave a room,” my parents would say, “turn off the light.” There was nothing green about this. It was simply economics and basic logic. After all, my mother was probably right when she said that my stuffed monkey wasn’t scared of the dark.

Chad’s Green Office Tips

Turning off the lights is pretty straight forward. There are advancements in this pledge that include occupancy sensors on lights. Most of them basically have a sensor near the door that senses when you enter the room and when you leave. If you forget to turn off the light when leaving, it will automatically do so for you after a set period of time. This may be worth looking into during your green office renovations.

I’ll add one more tip to this post to go along with the lights. Ceiling fans and all types of fans for that matter should be turned off when leaving a room for a prolonged period of time as they only serve a cooling function when they are blowing directly on people in the room.

This post is part of our ongoing, 30 part series breaking down the Green Office Pledge. Sign up for the pledge and be sure to check out the rest of the series for more tips and anectdotes.