Lynne Cherry

Girl Scout CFC Light Bulb Give-away

In 2009 Girl scouts in San Francisco gave away 5000 CFC light bulbs to raise awareness about energy conservation and to encourage people to reduce their carbon footprint in order to abate global warming. By half a million people changing just one of their light bulbs to compact fluorescents, tons of CO2 were prevented from going into the atmosphere. If everyone in the US changed from incandescent to compact fluorescent light bulbs, many tons of CO2 would be prevented from going into the atmosphere.

Here’s how you can do what they did in ten easy steps.

1. Join your local girl scouts troop;
2. Show the troop you join the Young Voices on Climate Change Girl Scouts video from the link on this website.
3. Find a mentor. Find a parent, teacher or Girl Scout leader to help you organize a CFC or LED giveaway.
4. Create a CFC giveaway page for your website. Write up a project description like the one below:

In 2009 Girl scouts in the San Francisco Bay area gave away 5000 compact fluorescent (CFC) light bulbs to raise awareness about energy conservation and give people an opportunity to do something about global climate change by reducing their carbon footprint The Sierra Club procured the bulbs from the utility PG&E and the girls went door to door giving out the bulbs and a booklet educating people about how to save energy and produce less global warming gases.

We girl scouts in _________ (your town) want to do what the San Francisco girl scouts did in order to show people that we can all do something about climate change. Can you be a sponsor and help stop global warming? We kids are going to have to live in a warmer world. Please help us keep the earth cool enough that we can continue to survive here.

5. find partners: go to local businesses that sell DVD’s or LED’s and ask them to donate light bulbs for your giveaway.
6. call local and environmental group sand ask if they will help you buy light bulbs.
7. Publicity: call local newspapers: radio stations and local TV news tell them about your light bulb giveaway. Ask them to join you on the day you go distribute door to door giving away light bulbs.
8. Write a press release .

Sample Press Release:
The girl scouts of troop #_____ will be giving away ____ # of CFC’s – compact fluorescent light bulbs on ______. Please come with us and tell others in ______________ (your community) how we Girl Scouts are helping to stop global warming.

9. Follow-up: e-mail press releases to the media with phone calls asking them to feature you on their news. Then go door to door with as many girl scouts as you can muster.
10. Follow up: Have a few girl scouts stay and interview recipients of the light bulb giveaway. Ask the people who you gave the bulbs to for comments:
Did the light bulb giveaway remind them about what they can do t reduce their carbon footprint?
Do they think they’ll be more likely to conserve energy in the future?
Would they be willing to use less energy? Drive less? Fly less? Better insulate their houses? Use air conditioning less?
Keep the heat down?