Greentime Episode #15 - CFLs
A lightbulb “suddenly burns out” and Rhett springs into green action, replacing the lightbulbs in our front room with CFLs. These things are great…they put out a beautiful white light and use 25-33% of the electricity of incandescent lights. Granted, they have mercury in them, but it’s not hard to work around that. They’re cheaper than LED lights and they really sip the electricity for what they do.
Some important links:
- Did you know consumers prefer CFL light? Really. Check out this Popular Mechanics study.
- What about the mercury content? Again, Popular Mechanics is there.
- Energy Star on CFLs, including proper disposal.
- Find a CFL recycling facility.
- CC Crane is pretty famous for LED lights, for the mercury-phobic.
- Check out the CFL Epidsode of Real World Green, our “distant cousin” green vlog.
Formats available: Quicktime (.mov), MPEG-4 Video (.m4v), Flash Video (.flv)
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Steve Elbows said,
August 23, 2007 @ 11:17 am
I also like the CFL’s last a very long time, although it remains to be seen how much the claims of quite how many years they last have been exagurated.
I think here in the UK
Rhett said,
August 24, 2007 @ 8:01 am
Wow. It’s THE STEVE ELBOWS! Wow. I feel in the presence of celebrity! And somehow we missed that you live in the UK. You do know that Amy lived in Cornwall for six years, right?
Anyhoo, about the lifetime measurements…I think they’re potentially accurate, because we have years of fluorescent light engineering on which to guess a days of use statistic. The real kink in the system is that CFLs are likely turned on and off more frequently than other fluorescents, which will change their lifetime. Use patterns like that can be hard to estimate with great accuracy in the lab. I know, because we deal with this all the time when making cellphones at Motorola.
I’d really love to see total lifecycle metrics on these things, though. What’s the embodied energy in producing a CFL? In recycling one? I can’t find anything on this.
Cheryl Colan said,
August 26, 2007 @ 8:12 am
I was wondering what the heck you meant by “lead” bulbs and whether they wouldn’t be more dangerous than mercury when I realized you were pronouncing “LED,” not “lead.” LOL!
Rhett said,
August 27, 2007 @ 7:20 am
LOL, Cheryl! I guess coming off of talking about mercury, one might have initially thought that. I’m a product of my surroundings, and most of the electrical engineers on my team pronounce “LED” as “lead”.