We waste so much energy in the US that it always intrigues me to see how people are saving it elsewhere. My hotel has this interesting energy-saving feature that I found extremely clever, so I thought I’d write it down.
Behind my door is a little holder thing for my keycard. If the keycard is removed from this holder, the lights and power switch off. In this way, you can’t leave the room and forget to turn off lights; they turn off automatically when you remove the card. Unfortunately, the power connected to my iPhone charger also turned off, so I guess it’s not possible to let something charge while away unless I’m missing a switch somewhere. Anyway, I thought this to be a very clever idea and wonder how much american hotels could save if they implemented something similar?
In Australia the majority of motels have this feature, what I do is take the key off the tag for the power, that way you can leave the thing in the socket and things will still be charged. also in Australia, we have duel flush toilets, half flush and full flush, another way to save water.
Adam, you may have just solved another mystery. I noticed that the toilet here has two buttons for flushing, both of which seemed to be doing the same thing. I bet they have the same half flush/full flush system as you describe. Very neat.
usually the left is half flush and the right is full. Here there are mostly some sort of symbol like a circle with a line through it for half and no line for full. maybe it’s slightly different.
We should implement this at house for our children. Lol