The Big Switch Off 2009
Don’t Standby – Switch Off!
The Big Switch Off is a campaign encouraging households,
businesses, schools and community organisations across Leicester,
Leicestershire and Rutland to switch off all unnecessary electrical
appliances. The campaign will take place over the period
12th to 18th October 2009.
Whether you are motivated by environmental or financial reasons
switching off appliances that are commonly left on standby makes
sense. If each householder in Leicestershire switched off
appliances, instead of leaving them on standby, every year we could
save on average, £13,186,541! This is equal to 21,315 tonnes of
carbon, which could fill 444,352 double decker buses!
North West Leicestershire District Council,
who are organising the campaign in partnership with ENABLE and the
Leicestershire Environment Partnership, will be working with
Central Networks to monitor the amount of electricity used during
the week-long switch off, to measure how successful the campaign
has been.
Last year, the campaign ran for just one day
(17th October 2008), but showed an energy reduction
across Leicestershire of 4.5 megawatt hours (enough to power 45,000
standard 100 watt light bulbs for one hour) compared to the same
time the week previously.
More information about how the campaign will
work, and how you can get involved, can be found on the Big
Switch Off website at www.leics.gov.uk/bigswitchoff
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