Student Watt Watchers Save Tax Dollars, Environment

They may have to stand on tip-toe to read an electric meter, but when students on the Watt Watcher team at Hollydale Elementary in Oregon started leaving little red tickets in classrooms where the lights were left on or other energy wasting activities were observed the savings sure began to add up. Now it seems they’re keeping roughly $800 a month from being wasted on energy no one is around to use, and learning a bit about grassroots organizing in the process.

Not surprisingly they’re a part of the Gresham-Barlow school district, the first school to win the EPA’s Energy Star award two times. And instituting a Watt Watcher team is just one of the strategies they’re utilizing to cut costs and pollution at the same time in their community.

Just one other great strategy they’ve begun to employ is bringing vocational students into the process of cutting energy usage in the community at large by having those studying energy management perform energy audits and equipment installations for local businesses at low cost in exchange for school credit and work experience.

Put simply, they’re as effective a set of Watt Watchers in the community as the elementary kids leaving behind little red tickets with a gentle reminder. And what better way to get high school students who are often otherwise classified as being “at-risk” involved in the process of making the world a better place for all of us?