Young people taking the lead

There is a very neat story in today's Chapel Hill Herald about some students at Chapel Hill High School who were given the opportunity to come up with strategies for saving fossil fuels in lieu of taking an exam.

They come up with the idea of using LED exit signs in local businesses and took the idea to the town's Downtown Partnership:

They found that LED lights annually would cost businesses $4 and would release approximately 72 pounds of carbon dioxide pollution, as compared with incandescent lights which would cost $28 dollars annually in energy costs and would release about 574 pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Pratson said that local businesses should be interested in using LED exit signs, if not for just the environmental benefits, but the financial savings as well.

You can read the full story here. Good for the students and good for their teacher too for giving them the leeway to do something more meaningful than book work.