NEW THINKER OF THE MONTH

Innovative individuals are doing some creative problem solving by re-thinking things we take for granted. Noah Horowitz, an NRDC engineer, took a look at the energy hogging vending machine.

There is now one soda machine for every 100 Americans! Some 3 million machines are humming away 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, using 10 times more energy than the average refrigerator (the biggest energy user in your home). Noah started looking at solutions like more efficient compressors, fans and lighting. He also rethought some of the simplest things like not having outdoor machines running all night in the middle of winter. The result is new machines that use half the energy of old ones. And when Coke and Pepsi finish phasing in the new designs, the savings will be 5 billion kilowatt hours per year!