Prison Saves on Water Usage, Cutting Budget in Half

In an effort to both "go green" and save some green, Montgomery County has instituted new plans to conserve energy. One of its first stops? The prison.

Eagleville's Montgomery County Correctional Facility was using an average of $4505,000 a year in water alone. Since the county commissioners instituted a new cut-back program, the spending is down to $225,000, or a 50 percent savings overall, according to a report on philly.com.

The county plans to continue such cutbacks to save on county spending, and to help conserve energy.

Smaller savings were noted in the philly.com report, including "cultural changes in how we work and commute," Shapiro told the site.

Philly.com noted changes such as hybrid and electric cars, using cloud-based services for storage and asking workers to turn off lights as more cost-saving and green measures it is exploring. A simple change in paper towel dispensers, it said, saved the county $10,000 a year.

For a full report on the county's saving measures, visit philly.com's story here.