Light shopping at food bank

By Joel Banner Baird • Free Press Staff Writer • October 5, 2009

The fortunate among us might grumble as we write our monthly checks or click online through bank accounts.

Rent, heat, gasoline add up; cable, telephone, cell service and Internet charges push up the totals to an irksome degree.

Electricity bills? An Energy-Star refrigerator helps, as do super-efficient washers and dryers.

And, oh, yes, let’s not forget to replace the bulbs in every room’s fixtures with compact florescent lights, or CFLs.

Vermonters with scrape-bottom disposable incomes now can help themselves to the most modest of those savings — the CFLs — through the collaborative efforts of Efficiency Vermont (which procured 15,000 bulbs at discounted rates for the project) and the Vermont Food Bank (which distributes food and household items at no cost to its 280-member statewide network).

“Forty percent of the people we serve have to choose between food and utilities,” said John Sayles, Vermont Food Bank’s CEO. “People tend to pay their fixed costs first, then see what’s left over for food.”

Friday in the parking lot of the Chittenden Emergency Food Shelf — the Food Bank’s largest hunger-relief service — Bhutanese refugees filled small plastic bags with free, field-gleaned potatoes. Inside, a man added two CFLs to his cardboard shopping box.

“It’s going to stretch those dollars further,” said Rachel Moss, the food shelf’s development director. “It’s a very good place to start.”

“The savings will be passed around to all of us,” added Mike Russom, market manager of Efficiency Vermont’s Residential Energy Services.

The Food Bank project, Russom said, will cumulatively save $136,000 in electricity costs for one year — and likewise reduce utilities’ outlay for power.

Over the typical 7-to-10-year life span of the 15,000 CFLs, the savings will total more than $860,000 and reduce the carbon emissions of fossil-fuel power plants by about 8 million tons, he said.

Efficiency Vermont is operated by the nonprofit Vermont Energy Investment Corp. and charged by the Vermont Public Service Board to strengthen all sectors of the state’s efficiency and conservation needs.