 Environment - April 12, 2008 |
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Project Porchlight launches locally
Approximately 70 volunteers hoping to distribute 17,000 compact fluorescent bulbs throughout city |
By Kevin Ma
Staff Writer
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Scores of volunteers are now roaming the streets of St. Albert hoping to get one free fluorescent bulb into every home.
Project Porchlight launched Tuesday night at St. Albert Centre. About 70 people turned up to help distribute some 17,000 compact fluorescent bulbs to local homes as part of a national campaign to save energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The campaign is sponsored by Encana and the Province of Alberta.
Organizer Forrest Tymchuk runs the volunteers through the basics of bulb-slinging. Wear your green button and your blue bulb-bag, he says. Read the information on the box. "No, you guys aren’t expected to change [the porch-light] for them," he says. "Don’t try to take money from them, I know it’s tempting."
Coun. Carol Watamaniuk praises the volunteers for their efforts. "My god, this sounds worse than running a campaign!" she says of the door-knocking involved. "But you’re doing it for a very noble cause: saving energy and helping the environment."
Project Porchlight started in 2004, when Stuart Hickox of Ontario read about the environmental benefits of fluorescent bulbs, Tymchuk says. According to Environment Canada, replacing one incandescent bulb with a fluorescent one in every home would keep 66,000 cars-worth of pollution out of the air each year. He passed out 50 to his friends and that snowballed into the campaign to distribute a million bulbs to homes in Ontario and Alberta.
The campaign has already distributed about 150,000 bulbs in Legal and Medicine Hat, Tymchuk says, and will pass out more in Edmonton and Calgary this summer. He hopes each of his volunteers would pass out about 100 bulbs in the next two weeks.
Paul Kane High School science teacher Michael Ng is ahead of the game there, having already done about 200. Almost all the volunteers at the launch were Paul Kane students or teachers.
Ng says he recruited the school’s science department to help out by dropping bulbs in their mailboxes. "It tied in well with the curriculum," he says of the campaign. The school is considering a light-bulb related event later in the year.
Harry Davison, 75, was one of the more senior volunteers at the launch. "Hey, I’m retired!" he says, when asked why he volunteered. "I got lots of time." About four of the 14 lights in his home are fluorescent, he says, and he plans to replace the rest of them as they burn out.
Sarah Elder, 14, says she heard about the campaign at Paul Kane’s recent open house. "We started [using the bulbs] when they first came out three years ago," she says, and have replaced over half of their bulbs. "They cost more, but even if they do, they pay for themselves."
Volunteers should emphasize the need to properly dispose of fluorescents when they burn out, Tymchuk says. "These bulbs need to be recycled," he says, as they contain mercury that can harm animals. "It’s about three milligrams and to put that in perspective a thermometer has about 500." Used bulbs should be dropped off at an Edmonton Eco-Station or any Ikea or Home Depot.
Ng admits that replacing one light bulb won’t have much effect on the environment. (Lighting is responsible for 2.4 per cent of each Canadian’s greenhouse gas emissions, according to Environment Canada; replacing every incandescent in the country with a fluorescent would reduce the country’s total emissions by about 0.43 per cent.) Still, he says, "Whatever helps, helps."
For more on Project Portchlight, call Tymchuk at (403) 645-2173. |
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