Image caption: The best practice lighting principles developed by the Australasian Dark Sky Alliance (ADSA)  Credit: ADSA

How much light is being produced for no useful purpose
Getting more of what we don’t want, can be just as harmful as not getting what we do want.

REPEATING THE same kinds of behaviour staking our happiness and wellbeing on purchasing new products that don’t deliver the end results we’re aiming for, is anything but wise. But it can be hard to break out of deeply ingrained ruts. We say we need more light, so off we go and get a stronger bulb, or install multiples where for years one would have been enough.

Like buying a litre of petrol or diesel to power our cars and trucks, we send 70 per cent into the sky polluting the air we breathe, while the ICE uses 30 per cent to propel us to our destinations – to where we want to go.

Similarly, buying a kilowatt hour of energy / electricity to power our lights, we often spill 70 per cent of the light in an upward direction, polluting the night sky, while only using 30 per cent to light our way – to see where it is we’re going.

It’s time to adopt the Australasian Dark Sky Alliance (ADSA) and Dark Sky International (DSI).   guidelines as illustrated in the graphic above.