Environment Club at ASH teams with Green Light N.O.

The Academy of the Sacred Heart’s Environmental Club collaborates with the nonprofit environmental group Green Light New Orleans to help residents save money on electricity bills while reducing carbon emissions in the environment.
    On March 3, several members of the club split into two groups to change incandescent lights bulbs to compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) in several homes throughout New Orleans.
   

Andreas Hoffmann, executive director and founder of Green Light New Orleans,  said the CFLs draw only 14 watts as compared to their 60-watt equivalent.
    “That’s a 75-percent energy savings,” he said.
    And, even though they may be more expensive than traditional watt light bulbs, each bulb lasts an average of 8,000 hours.
    The beauty of the light bulb replacement program is that anybody can receive the light bulbs.
    “We have a 100 percent nondiscriminatory policy,” Hoffmann said. “It doesn’t matter what your income is, what your background is.”
Swiss background
    Hoffmann made his way to New Orleans almost 20 years ago. He grew up in environmentally conscious Switzerland and became a little lazy about his energy consumption when he came to New Orleans.    
    He said Hurricane Katrina and having children was a wake-up call. He said he knew climate change had an impact on hurricanes, and thought to impact the rebuilding of the city as well as the pollution problem by starting an energy-saving project. Realization for him came on his own light bill.
    “When I returned to New Orleans and changed out my own light bulbs, I realized how much of a difference it made on my energy bills. Each light bulb over its life saves $45 in electricity.”
    He initially funded the program by asking audience members at gigs with his roots-rock band, Andy Hoffmann and the B-Goes, to make donations to Green Light New Orleans.    
    Now, five years later, the group has switched out 324,826 light bulbs in 14,083 homes throughout the New Orleans area. Approximately 6,000 volunteers have been involved.
    “That creates an energy savings of about $14 million and a carbon dioxide reduction of an impressive 145 million pounds,” he said.
    More than 90 percent of homeowners served by Green Light surveyed by Tulane University said they would replace their new light bulbs with energy-savings ones.
    Hoffmann said Academy of the Sacred Heart students have been some of the most devoted volunteers over the past three or so years.
    He also credited AmeriCorps volunteers with keeping the nonprofit going.
    “It’s based on volunteers,” Hoffmann said of Green Light New Orleans.
    The Academy of the Sacred Heart has done bake sales, and other fund-raisers to support its volunteer work. It also supports on-campus recycling programs.
Environmental club
    Liz Manthey, director of public relations and marketing at ASH, said the Environment Club has been working with Green Light New Orleans since 2009 when students Jamie Bertel and Johanna Gundlach initiated the partnership. The club has a goal of replacing 3,000 light bulbs by the end of this school year.
    

Any Sacred Heart student, not just environment club members, are invited to work on Saturdays with Green Light New Orleans.
    Junior Lillie Martin, 17, joined the Environmental Club this year and believes in its mission.
    “I like the service aspect,” she said. “We are all doing environmentally friendly things to keep the environment in line.”
    Martin and junior Gabby Daigle stopped by the home of the Rev. Carolyn Allen, a retired social worker and a Baptist minister at Stronger Hope Baptist Church, on March 3.
    They learned that Allen was paying close to $300 for electricity on her small, shotgun home – not far from the Calliope Housing residence where she grew up as a child.
     “This is really nice,” Allen, 70, said when the girls began changing 15 bulbs in lamps and light fixtures in her home. “Praise the Lord.”
    Students dispose of all light bulbs environmentally, Manthey said.
    Hoffmann said Green Light also partners with Energy Smart, a project through the New Orleans City Council administered by Entergy, to directly install energy-efficient light bulbs in homes.
    Because the program has been so successful, it is sometimes challenging to fulfill all the requests for light bulbs, Hoffmann said.
    “It’s the future,” Hoffmann told the Sacred Heart students. “It’s their future. My generation didn’t take care of everything. We just consumed and consumed. We thought it was going to go on forever. We never considered that earth is a finite thing. It’s your generation that has to bail us out. So it’s great to know that Sacred Heart has an environmental club. It’s a small thing that you do again and again, and it becomes a big thing.”
    Green Light New Orleans can be reached at 324-2429 or www.greenlightneworleans.org.