What is LittleGreenBulb?
LittleGreenBulb began
as a project to use Instant Messaging (IM), something that I'm
professionally involved with, to reach the largest number of people possible
and encourage them to do one simple thing that would help reduce our impact
on global warming. Collectively that one thing magnified by the many people
around the world using IM could make a significant impact.
That one simple thing is replacing traditional incandescent light bulbs with
energy efficient light bulbs. Reading the all the articles and facts on the
value of replacing traditional incandescent bulbs with CFL bulbs (that they
use 2/3 less energy than traditional bulbs, last up to 10,000 hours and pay
for themselves with 500 hours) didn't bring home the point until I replaced
nearly 40 bulbs in our home with energy efficient CFL bulbs, and reduced our
monthly electric bill by almost 25%.
So how big of a difference can you make?
We reduced our power
consumption by almost 25% compared to the same period a year ago for our six
bedroom, with a 3000 sqf home with two adults, two children, and a cat in
just over just three months by slowly replacing a total of 68 bulbs.
Notes: We started replacing incandescent bulbs in
February 2007 and continue to replace
the few remaining bulbs (we still have 14 left). We average a 20%
reduction in our utility bill due to CFL bulbs with the peak month of
November showing a 35% savings.
The
LittleGreenBulb project is both a web site (this one) and a Instant
Messaging (IM) chat bot. A "chat bot" is an application that
people can instant message as
if it were another person, only in this case the other person a program,
LittleGreenBulb,
that likes to talk about what people can do to reduce global warming, CFL
bulbs, take people's pledges to replace traditional incandescent bulbs with
energy efficient CFL bulbs and count the total number of people making
pledges and bulbs that people have pledged to replace.
LittleGreenBulb is
built on Windows Live Messenger (formerly MSN Messenger) and available
to the hundreds of millions people around the world that use that
service and that add it as a contact within Messenger.
The following video's helpful and interesting while working
on this project, and I hope you'll enjoy the following videos:
Ads and affiliate links in
LittleGreenBulb
are used to cover project costs which include: domain registration, on-going hosting costs, traffic acquisition through Microsoft's adCenter
solution and some level of taxes if anything is ever earned. In the event there is any income in excess of costs associated
with this project, that income will be donated to the
Washington State Nature Conservancy, documented here, and generously
matched 100% by my employer. Please contact
LittleGreenBulb with additional links or information that should be
posted here.
