Compact Flourescent Lights (CFL)
One of the first steps we took in becoming green was to switch out the light bulbs we were using with Compact Fluorescent Lights or CFL’s. Simply changing these lights and improving the energy efficiency of your lighting results in reduced pollution for the environment and lower costs for you over the life of the light bulb.
According to EnergyStar:
“If every American home replaced just one light bulb with an ENERGY STAR qualified bulb, we would save enough energy to light more than 3 million homes for a year, more than $600 million in annual energy costs, and prevent greenhouse gases equivalent to the emissions of more than 800,000 cars.”
The downside to CFL’s is that they contain small amounts of mercury and need to be disposed of specially rather than just dumped in the trash and sent to the landfill. Broken CFL’s leak mercury which could end up in the environment. If your electricity is supplied by coal burning power plants you’ll still reduce mercury in the environment by switching, even if you don’t dispose of the light bulbs properly. This is because regular incandescent bulbs use more energy and cause coal burning plants to release more mercury than the CFL’s contain. Check out Earth 911 to find places near you that accept CFL’s for recycling, so you can save money and help out the environment.
Changing out your light bulbs is one of the easiest and cheapest ways to become greener. Although there is a slight upfront cost to the CFL’s they last longer and save you money in electric bills. Even if you just buy one every time you go to the store, you can replace all of the light bulbs in your house in a month or two and start enjoying energy savings.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 24th, 2009 at 10:00 am and is filed under Going Green. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
February 25th, 2009 at 1:14 am
Since I've been renting, I've been leaving the CFL bulbs in the places when I move out, and then buying new ones for my new place. Hopefully that helps other people out, but hopefully they know that they need to recycle them when they do burn out! I've had issues with them a couple of times when CFLs burn out within a couple of days of installing them. I don't know if there are more inherent flaws in them, but I noticed that on the box, you can send them back and the company will replace them for free. But who really has time for that? Of course, I'll keep buying them though.
February 26th, 2009 at 7:03 am
We’ve put these bulbs in all of our outdoor areas. 3 of the bulbs have been in place for over 2 years. We were having to change those out at least every 6 months. So the upfront cost is more than worth it.
February 26th, 2009 at 9:38 pm
Good info – I wasn’t even aware that they needed to be disposed of differently. I started buying these when we came back from China so all the lamps in our house have them, but I haven’t had to replace any of them yet. When I do, now I can be sure to dispose of them properly!
February 27th, 2009 at 9:01 am
Angie,
We haven’t had any problems with them burning out really fast that I can remember, but that’s interesting that they’ll let you send them back for a refund. Sounds like a lot more trouble than it’s worth.
Daphne,
We just replaced our front porch light with a CFL and it’s been working pretty well. For some reason that light ALWAYS goes out so I hope this one lasts much longer than the regular bulbs as it’s a pain to change. I have to take apart the whole light to get the bulb in
Erin,
Yeah we didn’t know that at first either. Luckily the home depot by our house recycles CFL’s so it’s really no excuse to just get rid of them the right way and keep mercury out of the landfill.
September 24th, 2009 at 9:37 am
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