This week’s episode, “The Power of an Idea”, is all about putting ideas into action, something which Bill Lishman is quite famous for! Have you got an idea that you want to take flight?

Sure, it can be overwhelming to think about “saving the planet” from environmental destruction, but these GreenHeroes have found ways to make simple changes as part of a much bigger picture; that’s what GreenHeroes is all about.

If kids are the future, then isn’t it time we start educating them on making smart choices for a healthy planet?

TVO is a great place for safe, educational and entertaining programming for children up to 12 years old, and home to one of our favourite popular, longstanding kids shows: The Incredible Adventures of Enviro Girl.

It’s a bright and shiny weekly lesson on living green, an enthusiastic delivery of environmental tips, as well as basic lessons and tools to change the way kids and their parents live and care for the environment.

Photo credit: OneChange

Stuart’s not willing to sit still on conservation. He told us himself in his guest blog that he’s got bigger and brighter ideas. He also tweeted about it on September 20, 2010: “Suddenly, I'm Mr. Power Bar. Nice to be recognized as ‘the man who introduced Compact Fluorescent (CFL) bulbs to Ottawa’ but that's so 2008.”

He’s referring to a great article about his work in the Ottawa Citizen that offers other ways to reduce energy, and his message is clear: it’s not just about the bulbs. It’s about the actions and the future steps we continue to take to impact change.

Frankly, at One Change, we were getting tired of talking about light bulbs anyway. Vampire Load is so much sexier.

Buffy may be off the air, and I’m not buff enough to cameo on True Blood, but I’m welcoming the opportunity to represent One Change not as “the bulb guy” but as “the Slayer.”

Did you know that 15-20% of household energy use is power that is consumed by stuff that’s turned off?

All day, every day, a little trickle of power is being sucked from items like cell phone chargers, TVs, computers – yes, even when they are turned off!

A few years ago, Stuart Hickox came across a statistic on the Internet that made him realize that if everyone made a small change, the aggregate effect would be very large and for the better:

"If every American home replaced just one light with a light that's earned the ENERGY STAR, we would save enough energy to light 3 million homes for a year, save about $600 million in annual energy costs, and prevent 9 billion pounds of greenhouse gas emissions per year, equivalent to those from about 800,000 cars."
- EnergyStar.gov

Imagine a world in which we all make one simple change. If every one of us changed one single light bulb from an incandescent bulb to a compact fluorescent (CFL), the reduction in pollution from power generation would be like taking 800,000 cars off the road.

If every one of us checked the tire pressure on our cars, Canadian drivers could save enough fuel to fill 257 Olympic-size swimming pools.