Blog Action Day

The Blog Action Day website has a bunch of suggestions of small changes you can make to help the ol' environmental cause.
There are a lot of good ones that V and I try to instill in our lives like carpooling when schedules allow, unplugging appliances, and making sure we always have our non-disposable coffee cups. Others (recycling, washing clothes in cold water, lowering the thermostat) are just things we do without thinking about it.
#6 on this list is 'Turn off the lights'. At home, we are pretty good about this (although some of our aquarium lights do stay on all day). Most of our lights are the energy saver ones too. What I wanted to draw attention to is the lights in public places that unnecessarily stay on all the time. Must empty classrooms have the lights on from 7am till who knows when in the evening every day? Hallways often don't have accessible light switches in the first place and could be a safety concern. But the bathrooms? It might be inconvenient or strange at first to have to switch the lights on in the bathrooms but we are all used to doing it at home. A number of colleagues even leave office lights a-blazing when they leave for 5 minute walks down the hall to hours away in their labs!
I am going to try to make sure that my classroom and office lights are off when they are not being used and I urge others to do the same, if you don't already. Environmental responsibility may start with these small steps, but the small steps can be taken in all aspects of our lives.