Christmas is fast approaching and one of the first signs is the return of the annual LED Christmas Light Exchange, presented for the fifth year by the City of Red Deer and the Kerry Wood Nature Centre.
Starting today, Red Deer residents looking to trade old Christmas lights for new energy-efficient ones can stop in at the nature centre at 6300 45th Ave. to make the switch.
Bring in two strings of incandescent bulbs and receive one free box of multi-coloured LED lights in return. The wire from the lights received is recycled as scrap metal.
Bailey Doepker, the city’s environmental program specialist, said thousands of exterior house lights have been exchanged since the program started in 2009, saving residents on their power bills and reducing energy footprints overall.
An average home operating six strings of incandescent Christmas lights for around six hours a day consumes about 78 kWh of energy over the holiday season.
By replacing those old lights with the equivalent number of LEDs, only five kWh is used for the entire month to operate their lights, saving enough energy to power an average Red Deer home for about four days.
For more information, call the Kerry Wood Nature Centre at 403-346-2010 or the city’s Environment Initiatives Department at 403-342-8750, or visit www.reddeer.ca/environment.