The Green Movement: Time to get with it, America

    I am a big supporter of the Green Movement. I have been since I was a little tyke and Earth Day won my heart with baby seal pictures. As I grew older and realized how important the movement was, I jumped on board with actions like recycling and turning off lights when I left the room. In this way, I thought I was making a big enough impact. And honestly, I was in comparison to many Americans. But then I traveled to Spain in the summer of 2013 and I discovered that the United States is super behind in their efforts to reduce energy and the environmental movement.
    Much like the United States, Spain's economy and unemployment rate recently dipped to an all time low, the lowest it has been since the days of Franco. To combat this dip, Spain had to act fast and in a constructive way. One of the ideas that was proposed to alleviate the effects felt on the economy and job market in Spain was the adoption of some green energy methods in order to save money on importing energy, energy consumption rates, and in order to provide jobs, at least on a short term basis for the country's transition. Spain's government decided to hop on the green movement train as much as possible. So the country underwent some small but pivotal alterations, alterations that I believe would work really well in America.
   One of the alterations that the Spaniards made to change their energy consumption was in their electrical fixtures within establishments. The government created an ordinance in which businesses were told to implement timers and motion detectors for the light switches within the bathrooms and other rooms not constantly in use in a building. The timers would typically be set to turn off the lights in a room after two minutes without detecting movement. Granted, it was pretty annoying when the lights went off when you would be in the bathroom and you had to wiggle around and act like a fool to get the motion detector to see you. But after awhile, you began to get used to the interruption. I was in Spain for only 10 days and was able to adapt to this fairly quickly so I predict this would also be fairly easy for other Americans to adjust to the timed lights in bathroom or in rooms that were not used very much.
    Another constructive change that Spain has made in their businesses and daily lives to be more energy efficient is to change all businesses' restrooms to have automated water supplies. All toilets were supplied with automated flushers so that the same amount of water was used each time for each flush. A few businesses had a different flush setting for liquid waste and for solid waste, which cut down on the amount of water used for liquid wastes. All places we visited, in areas of poverty and in areas of good fortune, had automatic faucets and automatic paper towel dispensers or high efficiency blowers. These changes allowed for energy to be more efficiently used and for materials (like paper towels or water) to be easily wasted.
    A third alteration that Spain's businesses made to be more energy efficient and economical was shown in large hotels. In America, typically when a person first enters a hotel room, the first thing they do is turn on the light and then go about their merry way. Often times when a resident of a hotel leaves their room, they leave at least one light on. This is obviously a large waste of energy, especially when multiple lights are left on when a resident exits the room and the room is no longer in use. To combat this waste of electricity and resources, the large scale hotels in Spain have developed a light switch that can only be turned on when the resident sticks their key in the switch. When the key is removed, the lights are immediately switched off. This means whenever the resident leaves the room, since they have to remove their key from the switch to get back in, the lights will shut off in the room and remain off until the resident returns. I think that this system could work very well in America, not just for large scale hotels but also for small scale hotels, office buildings, and dormitories.
    The Spaniards also have windmills everywhere to harness the energy coming from the constant wind sweeping over the flat farmlands of the country. While we already have a good many windmills in the US, we can always have more. The Spanish have introduced some hydroelectric power and some solar power throughout the country. The economy in Spain is steadily improving and one of the primary reasons for this is the country's embrace for conservation of energy and resources. I think that America would benefit greatly from adopting these same changes into our society. Maybe the first step to this sort of initiative could be started from Wittenberg University. Our sustainability project task force could consider and creatively incorporate these changes into our daily routines as students. This could bring a lot of positive PR to Wittenberg and save us a good chunk of change in the long run.