I would like to share with you my personal  observation followed by my small initiative which I turned into campaign to save energy.

I have been staying in our building for last 11 years. The lights in corridors are always on-day or night. As the buildings in such residential areas are very compact , air tight so sunlight does not fall enough on corridors . That?s why light is needed in corridors even in day times. I have noticed that  in nights 11 pm or even later when teher is hardly any activity (sleeping times) , full intensity lights are on. I kept wondering ?Isn?t it wastage of energy??. But what could I have done to save it. I discussed with my parents that it?s very painful to see full lights on all 24 hours. I tried switching off light in day time around 11AM etc but it gets very dark due to no sunlight.  So it was clear that light is must as people keep coming & going through corrridors. What else can be done? I used to think of it often. Some people come back home late in nights either after overtime from work or after partying etc so even in nights we can?t switch off corridor lights.

Then we decided to meet our building watchman to discuss. When we told him about it , we were shocked to hear from him what we should have known on the 1^st day we entered our building. He showed us semicircular lights ( or we may call them dimmers) which should ideally be switched on after 10 pm as in night few people pass through the corridor  so low intensity light /dimmer could be enough there saving energy. These dimmers are on corridors of all the 11 floors of our building. Then my obvious question was why is this dimmer not being used ? He told that initially he used to switch off the main lights and switch these dimmers on after 10 pm but people used to still switch on the main lights thereby keeping both main and dimmer lights on leading to wastage of energy. So he stopped  switching this dimmer on.  I took this task in my hand , accepted it as my new mission or campaign and assured our watchman  that I would spread it?s awareness , would make people know that this facility exists and it should be used to save energy.

Me and my parents decided to take the ownership of this task(switching off the main lights & switching on the dimmers after 10pm).  Sun-Tuesday was my duty  , Wed-Thursday was my dad?s and Fri-Sat was my Mum?s duty to  go to each of the 11 floors at 10pm , switch off the main light and switch on these low watt lights or dimmers. Our duty also included waking up at 5 AM , checking if still dimmers are on and eventually switching main lights on at 5AM. Most of the days we saw all ok but few times we noticed that main lights are also switched on while the dimmers are on means people  carelessly switched on main light without even the need. Few people called watchman to report it as a failure of light system because they felt low intensity light. Then watchman told them about dimmers(instead of main light) being intentionally on after 10 pm to save energy.

As next step , I thought of spreading it?s awareness so that more and more people know about it . So whoever we were meeting in the lift , we told them about this dimmer as a way to save energy. Me & my parents try to talk about it to whoever we meet on the way within our building and have been telling them to tell their neighbours . I am quite satisfied that most of the residents in our building are now aware of this simple way of saving some energy.

I also pasted a A4 size notice near the dimmer on all floors saying ? Please switch on this dimmer after 10pm every night to save energy? . I have also tried to do awareness sessions by  gathering  the residents (whoever I could) on each floor and showed them the dimmer and their co-operation in saving energy.

So far me and my parents are still doing our duty , ensuring main lights off and dimmers on after 10pm. Some people may say that this is not my job , this is watchman?s job but if watchman  was determined enough  to save energy  , we would all have known about dimmer?s existence  by now. The very fact that I being one of the oldest residents of this building, was not aware of this dimmer , proves that watchman gave up easily not caring much for energy wastage.  It is all of our responsibility towards Mother Earth , towards conserving resources. Honestly speaking , I find it very satisfying to do it .  Such small small things together contribute to big savings .

Let?s  be the change to see the change we want.