A school in Long Island New York announced this week that their experiment to reduce power consumption at the school was successful. The project was reportedly able to save the school over on third of a million dollars in a year simply by putting up reminders on sticky notes all around the schools in the district.

The Mount Sinai school district decided to implement this unique energy saving tactic last year when the district started facing serious budget cuts; officials reportedly though of the idea while brainstorming for potential budget savers. Shortly after thinking of the idea the school district put up small sticky notes over each light switch encouraging teachers, students, and staff to turn off the power when nobody is in the room.

Since 2007 the school district has seen an incredible decrease of 30% in power consumption and this program is the only program they have instituted. As news of the school district’s success spread around the country numerous other school districts have begun implementing similar programs. In the end schools are finally realizing that saving power is much easier than anticipated; it doesn’t require and special equipment or tools as long as children and taught the proper principals. In the long run this could even lead to less power consumption by the children as they get older and eventually move on to live on their own. For now though schools are simply happy to see a reduction in power costs.