I’d like you to take a good look at this photo. This was taken at a local restaurant they other morning. How many things are simply wrong with this situation? Well, let’s see what we can come up with. First up, the lights are on at 4:00am. Yes, 4:00am in the morning. The business has been closed for about 6 hours now. Closed for 6 hours, and yet every singe outdoor light is on. Ok, what else?

This shot was taken on January 5th, 2008. As you can see from the snow, we’re in the middle of a serious winter. There is close to 18″ of snow on the ground and on the tables. While the restaurant has exterior seating, and hence a need for patio lights, they’ve not seated a customer out here since perhaps September. So, these lights have been on each night for the last 3 or 4 months without a single customer being seated out here.

The lights are incredibly glaring. Most all of the fixtures pictured here offer absolutely no lighting control whatsoever. These light fixtures shine light up, down and sideways. This is incredibly wasteful. Most of the light is shined where it doesn’t belong… up in the night sky, out into traffic, into the eyes of patrons, and… out yeah… down onto the ground.
What in the world are these people thinking? Likely, they’ve not even given it a second thought. So many outdoor lights are put on a timer and forgotten about. Absolutely no thought is given to when the lights actually need to be on. That might be an exaggeration. The environmentally destructive thought process is to simply have the lights on when its dark. No, nobody is out there… but its dark… so the lights should be turned on, right? Wrong. The lights should be on when they need to be on…. when customers will be walking through the area and eating in the area.

This kind of behavior is replicated at business across the country night after night, year after year. This wastes billions and billions of dollars annually and consumes incalculable quantities of valuable natural resources. In the process of generating all this electricity needlessly, huge amounts of green house gases are emitted into the atmosphere. With the growing awareness of global warming, this kind of behavior is simply unacceptable and incredibly irresponsible.  So, if you own a business or are responsible for making decisions that affect the behavior of a business, take note. Is your company being a good corporate citizen? Is your company behaving in a manner that is environmentally friendly? Would you be embarrassed if somebody came by one of your facilities with a camera?