Lets Cut Carbs… Our Carbon footprint,

that is.A Destination Conservation project

Created by Alexa and SydneyOur mission is to reduce the amount of energy used in our school by

at least ten percent

To educate as many people as we can to follow simple steps to reduce our energy consumption such as:

Weatherizers. This is the areas in your house that bring in drafts. E.g.. Under doors, cocking around windows and attic insulation.

Unplug. This is a major factor on reducing energy in your home by unplugging seldom used appliances.

Use compact florescent bulbs. Lighting in each house adds up to 15% of energy use. If you switch the bulbs to ones of lower energy using ones, you could save roughly $60 each year. That adds up.

Our ultimate goal…

Water Heater Blankets. Believe it or not, there is blankets you can put on top of your water heater to insolate it and keep it warm. Yes, water heaters need to stay warm too.

Fresh Filters. There's never a bad time to replace your filter, if not it could get clogged and take up more energy to try and keep it running and allow air flow through.

Insulate. Start with the attic, this could save you 20 to 35% in heating and air conditioning costs.

Buy Energy Efficient Appliances. Look for appliances with the energy star label, this means the appliance will be using 20 to 40% less energy. These are more costly measure, but remember in the end you will save much more on your energy bill.

If the best could happen, it would be to be able to reduce our energy consumption by at least 10% and have the board of education pay for the ideas we have to reduce the energy consumption. For this year, it would be energy wise lighting. This isn't our only goal though, through this we would like to promote this in other schools so that together as a Catholic community we reduce our energy footprint. We will know we have been successful once we have done as much education as possible, see the results through the eniscope lower by ten percent, and that’s just our minimum goal. A little truly goes a long way.

Charting our plan…

Everyone. Though the most impact will be seen in our school, that benefits not only our community, but our world. I believe that every step like this project wont just be felt in one place, every small step helps build this world into the place it should be.

Who will Benefit?

Its harder then you think to reduce energy and sustain that… it takes a change in our daily routine and we can never fall short in keeping up with not going back to our original routine. We must keep it fresh in our minds that it wont be the easiest task to change something you’ve been doing for years, but if we keep doing what we are no change will be seen and the only place we and our world will be going is downhill.

Our roadblocks…

The whole point of this project is to reduce our energy use by ten percent, with this we will be granted a certain amount of money to change all the lighting fixtures to energy efficient ones. That said, we must prove to destination conservation that we reduce our energy usage by ten percent sustainably.

For this project, its not the money we are worried about coming up with it’s the act of lowering the energy in the school used by ten percent.

In terms of budget

Our main goal is to reduce the amount by ten percent, stressing that. Our resources would be ways and tips to reduce our energy consumption without having to spend a ton of money on getting new things. That’s what the grants are for.

Our partnership or team that we are working with to reduce energy is Destination Conservation. They supported us in our goal and without them, this goal or the possible reduction of lighting usage wouldn’t be possible. We cant thank them enough. We will be in touch with Destination Conservation often to give them a progress report and update them on how we are doing to meet our goal by the end of this school year.

Resources…

When we find good ideas to reduce our energy by even a little, we must follow through with that specific idea and not just for a certain amount of time, forever.

We must make sure that we meet our goal to get these lights in hopefully by the end of this school year so the people that take on this project for next year can focus on something else to reduce energy and so on.

Tasks..

The gaps and holes in each house is equivalent of a three foot by three foot hole in the wall!

Did you know?

We have multiple deadlines for smaller projects to do with this project, but basically our deadline is June 3rd 2012. By this date, Sydney and I will have the numbers for the Mayor’s Expo to essentially prove what we have accomplished over the past year has been successful.

January 20th 2012, we will have our video sent to Canadian Geographic. To do so, we will register our classroom on the challenge website at Canadian Geographic’s site.

Our second goal is sometime within the next two months (December-February) to educate the students and staff at St.James to reduce our energy consumption and make it visible on the Eniscope. We will do presentation to each class and show them what can happen when we reduce, this could include prizes to encourage the students.

From February on, we should be able to see results in lowering the energy at our school, if not we must enforce and educate the student body that if action isn't taken, this planet will only continue on a downward spiral.

Mapping Out Our Project