Sustaining Us

Conservation is nothing new and in many ways we’ve been practicing good conservation techniques for a long time. One of my good friends pointed me in the direction of Revolving Doors, which have been in use for decades. Little did I know just how efficient these mechanisms are. I’ll defer to the good guys at MIT to explain the dynamics of it all, but they save a ton of energy and money. We’re talking major savings. According to the building studied at MIT, the revolving doors insulate four times as well as swing doors. Per entrance or exit, swing doors use these amounts of equivalent energy,

• 1.3 hours of light from a desk lamp
• 4.3 hours of light from a compact fluorescent bulb
• Driving a car 306 feet
• Half a mile jog

Doing some rough math I figured that a building with 1,250 occupants switching from swing doors to revolving doors can save enough energy to get a Hummer from New York City to Washington D.C., a four hour trip. Now imagine the savings in a busy New York City office building. For large institutions the savings involved in the switch could be immense, just ask MIT.

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