Faculty & Staff  |  Procurement and Business Services | INDIVIDUALS IMPACT OUR ENVIRONMENT . . .  EVERY DAY, EVERY ACTION A hot water faucet that leaks one drop per second can add up to 165 gallons a month. That's more than one person uses in two weeks. An energy-smart clothes washer can save more water in one year than one person drinks in an entire lifetime. An automatic dishwasher uses less hot water than doing dishes by hand -- an average of six gallons less, or more than 2,000 gallons per year. An American family of four uses up to 260 gallons of water in the home per day. Running tap water for two minutes is equal to 3-5 gallons of water. A 5-minute shower is equal to 20-35 gallons of water. A full bath is equal to approximately 60 gallons of water. Water efficient fixtures can cut water use by 30 percent. Although accounting for only 5 percent of the world's population, Americans consume 26 percent of the world's energy. America uses about 15 times more energy per person than the typical developing country.

A heavy coat of dust on a light bulb can block up to half of the light. When you turn on an incandescent light bulb, only 10% of the electricity used is turned into light. The other 90% is wasted as heat. A compact fluorescent light bulb uses 75 percent less energy than a regular bulb and it can last up to four years. A crack as small as 1/16th of an inch around a window frame can let in as much cold air as leaving the window open three inches. Some new refrigerators are so energy-smart they use less electricity than a light bulb. Every time you open the refrigerator door, up to 30 percent of the cold air can escape. Every year, more than $13 billion worth of energy leaks from houses through small holes and cracks. That's more than $150 per family. Office buildings use approximately 19 percent of all energy consumed in the United States. Heating, ventilating and air conditioning systems account for  40-60 percent of total energy use in the commercial sector.

A single-sided, 10-page letter costs $.55 to mail. If copied on both sides, the letter uses only five sheets and costs only $.34 to mail. One ton of 100 percent recycled paper saves the equivalent of 4,100 kWh of energy, 7,000 gallons of water, 60 pounds of air emissions and three cubic yards of landfill space.Venetian Blinds For Angled Windows In the United States, more than 40 percent of municipal solid waste is paper -- about 71.8 tons a year.Prom Dress Stores Tri County Mall A design of an incandescent lightbulbMoen Shower Faucet Low Hot Water Pressure A light bulb, or electric light or electric lamp is a device that produces light from electricity.[1] In addition to lighting a dark space, they can be used to show an electronic device is on, to direct traffic, for heat, and many other purposes.

Early people used candles and oil lamps for light (often from whale oil). Crude incandescent lights were made in the early and middle 19th century but had little use. Improved vacuum pumps and better materials made them shine longer and brighter late in the century. Electric generator stations brought electricity to urban and later rural areas to power them. Later gas discharge lights including fluorescent lights use less electricity to make more light. There are several kinds of light bulbs: Light bulbs convert electricity into light and heat. Except for heat lamps, the heat is considered waste. A light bulb that produces more light and less heat is more efficient. The incandescent light bulb turns electricity into light by sending the electric current through a thin wire called a filament. Filament is made up mostly of tungsten, a type of metal. The resistance of the filament heats the bulb up. Eventually the filament gets so hot that it glows, producing light. The filament needs to be protected from oxygen in the air, so it is inside the bulb, and the air in the bulb is either removed (a vacuum) or more often, replaced with a gas that doesn't affect anything, like neon or argon.

Only about 3% of the energy that goes into an incandescent light bulb actually makes light, the rest makes heat. This is the type of light bulb that Thomas Edison spent so much time on in the 1870s. It was the first light bulb that could be used in houses - it did not cost too much, and it worked well. For the first time, people did not have to burn something (candles, oil lamps, kerosene lamps, etc.) to make light. It was bright enough that people could read easily at night or do work. It was used to light stores and streets, and people could travel around after dark. This started the common use of electricity in homes and businesses. Fluorescent lamps are efficient, and only give off ¼ the amount of heat of an incandescent. They also last longer than incandescent but until recently were much bigger and did not fit into sockets for small overhead lights and lamps like an incandescent could. A fluorescent bulb is a glass tube usually filled with argon gas and a little bit of mercury.

When turned on, the cathode heats up and sends out electrons. These hit the argon gas and the mercury. The argon gas makes a plasma which lets the electrons move around better. When the electrons hit a mercury atom it puts the molecule into a state where it has a lot of energy (stores the energy). The energetic state doesn't last very long, and when the energy is released, it lets out a photon. Photons from mercury are not visible like some other photons; So there's a phosphor coating on the wall of the bulb. When the photon hits a phosphor molecule, it in turn puts that molecule into an excited state. When this phosphor releases energy, it lets out a photon that we can see, and light is made. Changing the type of phosphor can change the color we see, but usually fluorescent lightbulbs are whiter than incandescent lightbulbs, which are slightly yellow. (See main article on light-emitting diodes.) An LED is made like electronics, it is a chip of semiconducting material, usually silicon.