REDUCE ELECTRICITY WEEK

This week Andree', Charice, Aaron, Maria, and our new volunteer, Josh, have all enjoyed...well survived working in the dark. Luckily for Andree', her room has enough natural light that she never needs to turn the light on, so this was just another normal week for her. For the rest of us, we've been depending on the little sunlight we get through our windows.

At home, Andree' concentrated on turning off fans in rooms that weren't being occupied, or when her family left the house. One thing she didn't do but would have liked to was to install more power strips to turn off and on rather than leaving power sucking items like chargers constantly plugged in.

Although Aaron's parents insist on leaving lights on at night, he made an electricity reducing decision to start reading The Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut instead of watching TV.

Maria has had trouble with working in a dark office, but has survived with the help of her solar lamp!
Crystal and her family cut out tv, computers, radio and any extra electricity besides cooling between 11-4. Her kids also unplugged any chargers not being used.

No Impact Summer

Inspired by the readings of No Impact Man, USEE has decided to take on a No Impact Summer!! For the next 5 weeks, USEE will be taking a new challenge every week to reduce our impact on the environment. We will be posting the stories of our successes and frustrations as we work through this project. We hope you'll join us in trying some no impact challenges for yourself! Here's what our summer looks like:

Stage 1: July 9-15 NO TRASH WEEK
-Reduce amount of trash, compost, use reusable bags, scrap paper, recycle

Stage 2: July 16-22 NO CONSUMPTION WEEK
-Don't buy anything new that is not food, no extra shopping, try second hand if needed

Stage 3: July 23-29 REDUCE ELECTRICITY WEEK
-Work with the lights off, turn off lights in your house, unplug chargers and appliances

Stage 4: July 30-August 5 EAT LOCAL WEEK
- Buy from the farmers market, get creative, incorporate at least one local food into every meal

Stage 5: August 6-12 SAVE WATER WEEK
-Take shorter showers, turn off water in the sink, hand wash

Keep checking our blog and facebook for posts throughout our journey and feel free to share stories with us about how you are reducing your impact!