ENERGY STAR Operation Change Out – The Military Challenge

ENERGY STAR Operation Change Out – The Military Challenge, a joint effort of the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. Department of Defense, is the first national, military-focused, energy-efficiency campaign to encourage every serviceman and woman to save energy, money and protect the environment by replacing their inefficient, incandescent light bulbs with ENERGY STAR qualified bulbs. 

Ramstein announced its participation in the ENERGY STAR Operation Change Out – The Military Challenge in May 2008 and needs its population’s support and high participation to succeed in this challenge by reducing CO2 emissions and keeping the world “green” for our children.  

An ENERGY STAR qualified compact fluorescent light bulb (CFL) will save about $30 over its lifetime and pay for itself in about six months. It uses 75 percent less energy and lasts about 10 times longer than an incandescent bulb.

If every home in America replaced just one incandescent light bulb with an ENERGY STAR qualified CFL, we would save enough energy to light more than 3 million homes and prevent greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to that of 800,000 cars.

And even though CFLs contain a small amount of mercury that could ultimately end up in the environment, that amount is significantly less than the amount of mercury avoided as a result of the energy savings.

Like any other product containing potentially hazardous materials that you use in your home, old CFLs need to be taken to the recycling centers.

Individuals supporting this campaign are asked to e-mail the number of changed out light bulbs to werner.mummert@ramstein.af.mil.

At the end of every month, those numbers will be sent out to the ENERGY STAR Operation Change Out campaign staff to update the current status. The current status can be viewed at www.energystar.gov/OCO.

(Provided by the 86th CES)