Listen Up Y’all It’s (Office) Sabotage
We recently moved offices for my “real” job. So when we moved, we had vending machines installed. With my little power and suggestions, I was able to get the snack machine lights removed today. To keep people from thinking the machines are off, I created some signs and placed them on the machines. I also created a little sign and put it above the coffee. It reads, “Put sugar & cream in your cup before the coffee and you won’t need a stir stick.” The nice touch was the old NBC PSA logo, “the more you know.” It’s a simple change.
Vending machines are tough, because they generally consume a ton of energy. The energy consumption from non-cooled snacks like chips are easier to curb if you can get your vendor to turn the lights off in the machine. Most of the energy from these machines all go into the lighting. So that’s a quick win. Soda machines that are refrigerated are bit tougher. Apparently there are these retrofit things you can install - occupancy sensors – that will turn on and off the compressor. So whenever the machine isn’t in use, the compressor shuts off. If the machine is inactive for two hours, the compressor kicks back in and cools the machine to the proper temp and shuts back off. That could save a lot of energy. I settled for just having the lighting turned off. That’s an energy savings of about $126/yr – or $10/mo. The lights are on 24/7…not anymore.
Oh yeah…it’s sabotage because these little signs could go everywhere in the office to make people start to think about their choices…hrmm…what to place a sign on next? Maybe drop signs around the city…
[audio:http://www.archive.org/download/BBOYS/Sabotage_64kb.mp3]
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