Participating Merchants:

Ben Franklin
13 W. College St.

Watson Hardware
26 S. Main St.

To arrange installation:
contact Steven Dupee at Oberlin Municipal Light and Power,
440/775-7260
or e-mail Tami.Blumenfield @oberlin.edu.

Energy and water conservation kits are available from Ben Franklin Store and Watson Hardware for 50 percent under retail cost: $27.

Trained students from the Coalition will install the packages for free, and appointments can be made starting now by contacting the organization through e-mail, or by calling Steve Dupee at Oberlin Municipal Light & Power (775-7260).

"The kits also make excellent holiday gifts," she adds, "and would simply involve people purchasing the kits for family/friends and calling Dupee to make appointments."

In the package are a water-heater insulation blanket ($7); compact fluorescent light bulb ($10); and water-saving devices, including a low-flow shower head, two faucet aerators, a set of toilet-tank dams, leak detector tablets ($10); and an energy conservation booklet.

"We've installed the kits at my apartment, and the light bulb is not harsh light at all, and I'm quite happy with it. They pay back within a couple months in utilities savings," says Blumenfield, a senior from Milwaukee, WI.

Annual savings from the water conservation kit are projected at more than $337. In addition, a hot-water tank insulation blanket for an electric heater would save $26 and for a gas heater, $5, and replacing a 90-watt incandescent bulb with a compact fluorescent would save $7.95. Program participants are encouraged to spend the savings on further energy conservation.

Blumenfield says that the Coalition conservation project has ties to the Climate Change Symposium that will be held by the College’s Environmental Studies department in February. The project also is connected to the Oberlin 2020 Project, which aims to eliminate the College’s net fossil fuel emissions by the year 2020.

The community’s first energy conservation package was installed in the home of Oberlin City Council Chair Fran Baumann three years ago as an initiative of the Oberlin Coalition for Community Development.

The town/gown collaboration was an outgrowth of the 1997 City and College's Symposium on Sustainable Development, which was convened to discover ways to lessen environmental problems caused by urban sprawl without halting economic progress.

Media Contact: Betty Gabrielli 12/21/00 #63 bg